If the heavens were all parchment, and the trees of the forest all pens, and every human being were a scribe, it would still be impossible to record all that I have learned from my teachers.
—Jochanan ben Zakkai, c. 75Quotes
Rewards and punishment are the lowest form of education.
—Zhuangzi, c. 286 BCKnowledge is an ancient error reflecting on its youth.
—Francis Picabia, 1949Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
—William Hazlitt, 1821I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool than I am.
—Alice James, 1889In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.
—Mark Twain, 1897It is a greater advantage to be honestly educated than honorably born.
—Erasmus, 1518The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object.
—Hannah Arendt, 1972I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That’s what sitting on your ass does to your face.
—Leonard Cohen, 1970Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
—E.M. Forster, 1951It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
—Frederick Douglass, 1852Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing—the rest is mere sheep herding.
—Ezra Pound, 1934What harm is there in getting knowledge and learning, were it from a sot, a pot, a fool, a winter mitten, or an old slipper?
—François Rabelais, 1533