It 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.

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool than I am. 

The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

The period of a [Persian] boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and he is taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth.

What harm is there in getting knowledge and learning, were it from a sot, a pot, a fool, a winter mitten, or an old slipper? 

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.

A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on nonalcoholic wine.

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.

Anyone who has a child should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he’ll escape.

Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence university education.

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.