That which is evil is soon learned. 

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

Knowledge is an ancient error reflecting on its youth. 

All that we know is nothing can be known. 

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing—the rest is mere sheep herding.

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

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

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? 

It is a greater advantage to be honestly educated than honorably born.

Rewards and punishment are the lowest form of education.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

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

Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. It is the past, not the dizzy present, that is the best door to the future.