Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.

But ever since I was a kid, I was always the winner.

In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‚Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

When I was 50 years old, I actually decided to draw up a list of half a dozen things that I really hadn’t done very well, and I was going to make efforts to improve. One of them was skiing, and I really did become a very much better skier.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.

Dream and you shall become.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

If you want to be a voice for peace in the world, begin by making peace a permanent condition of your own life.

To create something you must be something.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‚That person I see is a savage monster;‘ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

There is no real limit to how much better a person who really commits to getting better can get. Every manager has the potential to become an excellent manager for the rest of his or her career.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don’t speak the language and haven’t been before – that’s really satisfying to me. I like that.

You don’t read in your own field. You read in that field when you’re young, so that you can learn.

What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility – America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts.

I’ve learned through my own relationship with God that He’s not expecting me to be perfect; He wants me to do my best to be in His will and take steps of faith as He leads me, through His Word and the promptings He speaks to my heart.

In ‚Gran Torino,‘ I play a guy who’s racially offensive. But he learned. It shows that you’re never too old to learn and embrace people that you don’t understand to begin with. It seems like nobody else got that message, I guess.

I created myself. I have taught myself so much.

I think people take me as seriously as I want them to. They take me as seriously as I take myself – let’s put it that way.

I notice that young men go to the universities in order to become doctors or philosophers or anything, so long as it is a title, and that many go in for those professions who are utterly unfit for them, while others who would be very competent are prevented by business or their daily cares, which keep them away from letters.

When schools flourish, all flourishes.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?

Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.

I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.

Confidence comes from discipline and training.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

I think a role model is a mentor – someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

In truth, I did enjoy the benefits of a Harvard connection.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

Find people who will make you better.

Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap – let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he’s well dressed. There ain’t much credit in that.

Each time we cooperate with God, we take one more giant step forward. Because when God asks us to change, it means that He always has something better to give us – more freedom, greater joy, and greater blessings.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.

If you’re doing your best, you won’t have any time to worry about failure.

Those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

That is my wish, hope, instruction for all of you: Take your education seriously, okay? Always do that. Because I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my education.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.