Archive

Quotes

Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevist forever.

—Vladimir Lenin, 1923

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

—Erasmus, 1518

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

—Mark Twain, 1897

That which is evil is soon learned. 

—John Ray, 1670

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

—Joseph Stalin, 1934

Rewards and punishment are the lowest form of education.

—Zhuangzi, c. 286 BC

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

—Karl Kraus, 1909

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

—Allen Ginsberg, 1981

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

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

Knowledge is an ancient error reflecting on its youth. 

—Francis Picabia, 1949

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

—Ezra Pound, 1934

I 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, 1970

All that we know is nothing can be known. 

—Lord Byron, 1812