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Quotes

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

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

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

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

—George Santayana, 1905

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

—Heinrich Heine, 1827

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

—Allen Ginsberg, 1981

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

—E.M. Forster, 1951

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

—W.H. Auden, 1947

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

—Laurence Sterne, 1760

If the heavens were all parchment, and the trees of the forest all pens, and every human being were a scribe, it would still be impossible to record all that I have learned from my teachers.

—Jochanan ben Zakkai, c. 75

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.

—Frederick Douglass, 1852

That which is evil is soon learned. 

—John Ray, 1670

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