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

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

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

That which is evil is soon learned. 

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

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.

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.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad. 

The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin. 

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.

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

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