I enjoy quotes. Often times they can be both witty and insightful. A good quote can brighten your day and should leave you with an enlightened feeling… like you’ve left knowing more than you did before. My homepage has a handful of widgets that are quote based. Each day I get to learn something that Einstein said. Sometimes I’ll get a nice political quip from Jon Stewart.
Above my desk I have a list of quotations from the great thinker Socrates. There are a number of quotes included in the list that I’ve tried to live by, but one in particular that has always stuck with me. It says, “The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.” I think that what he was trying to say is that education and the pursuit of knowledge is the road that leads to greatness.
So with that, I’ve compiled a list of what I feel to be some of the most poignant and remarkable quotes regarding the noblest of pursuits, education. Some are funny, some are insightful, some are from great thinkers and some are from popular figures, but all are great. And I hope that you don’t mind, but I threw my 2 cents in.
“Remember that our nation’s first great leaders were also our first great scholars.”
John F. Kennedy
An apt quote from the author of “Profiles in Courage” and a great American. I don’t think that it
is a coincidence that the success of our country was founded on the backs of our great scholars
more so than it was on the backs of our great legislators.
“A liberally educated person meets new ideas with curiosity and fascination. An illiberally educated person meets new ideas with fear.”
- James B. Stockdale
You might remember Admiral Stockdale as Ross Perot’s running mate, and the disastrous Vice Presidential debates of ’92. But truth be told, he was a P.O.W. camp survivor for 8 years. The quote is telling that one of the most decorated men in U.S. Military history held a stance on education that most politicians today would describe as “left wing liberal.”
“Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”
- John Adams
Going back to the JFK quote, we look at one of our nation’s founders. If John Adams were alive and running for office today, he would be decried as a “bleeding heart” and unrealistic as to the amount of budget that can be allotted to education.
“Education is not the answer to the question. Education is the means to the answer to all questions.”
- William Allin
When I hear this quote, I think of the incredible minds associated the Large Hadron Collider. These people have taken their educations and degrees and used this knowledge to help answer some of the most difficult and pressing questions of all time. Namely, “What is life really?” and “How did we get here?”
“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”
- Aristotle
An important note about how intrinsically tied the relationship is between the education of youth with the success of the future. Something I think that we forget all too often.
“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
- Jim Rohn
I think that what is being said here is that a degree will take you so far, but your own education and experience will take you much further.
“In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I’ve got to be honest here, I love Nietzsche quotes. He has a point with this quote, that public education is like institutional cooking… no love, care or technique applied. While it may be true, it can be up to the student to add the ‘salt and pepper”, and turn it into a good meal.
“The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.”
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
I love this quote because I detest dogmatic educators. Beware anyone who is dogmatic, because they hold you in contempt. And a teacher who holds his students in contempt is a greater hindrance then no teacher at all.
“The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
There are a great many who have enough education to pass an exam, but it is the ones that take that knowledge and turn it into magic that are to be esteemed. I think of the men and women involved with the early N.A.S.A. programs, who took their degrees and said “With this knowledge, we can accomplish something that man has quested for millennia.”
” Conservatives say teaching sex education in the public schools will promote promiscuity. With our public education system? If we promote promiscuity the same way we promote math or science, they’ve got nothing to worry about.”
- Beverly Mickens
I find this quote to be both funny and sad. What is the old adage? “The truth hurts.”
“Ye can lead a man up to the university, but you can’t make him think.”
- Finley Peter Dunne
Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.”
- Chinese Proverb
I left these last two quotes for the end, because I feel that they have a special significance when it comes to online education degrees. If you’re learning about getting your education degree online, then you’ve taken the first steps in a journey. But once you’ve figured out what you’re goals are, where you’re going to go to achieve them, and how you are going to do that, you’re still left facing the journey itself. It’s easy, when you’re taking an online education course, to say to yourself “I’ll get to the paper later, I’m going to watch some T.V. first.” When you don’t have to face a professor and tell them that you don’t have the assignment finished by deadline you can find yourself procrastinating more. The truth is that if you want to you want to finish an education degree and you want to teach others, you must first start by educating yourself.
Did you enjoy this article?
