All that we know is nothing can be known. 

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

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. 

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? 

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

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

Knowledge is an ancient error reflecting on its youth. 

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

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.

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

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

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