The 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.

The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you. 

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

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? 

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.

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

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That’s what sitting on your ass does to your face.

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

That which is evil is soon learned. 

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

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

Knowledge is an ancient error reflecting on its youth.