Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

They know enough who know how to learn.

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.

If the Great Way perishes there will morality and duty. When cleverness and knowledge arise great lies will flourish. When relatives fall out with one another there will be filial duty and love. When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.

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.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

I’ve never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

In military school, on day one you must memorize the mission of the Merchant Marine Academy.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.

The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That’s one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.

What makes you a SEAL, what makes you a SEAL is being a good tactician on the battle field, understanding how to shoot, move, and communicate, knowing small unit maneuver warfare. That’s what makes a good SEAL, and so that is the course of instruction that I taught, was getting SEAL platoons ready for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the most important things you learn from the Internet is that there is no ‚them‘ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‚us.‘

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

When I’m really interested in something, I get superfocused on that. And I can spend hours upon hours not getting tired of reading about it and still be interested to learn more about it.

I’ve learned never to say never.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

I like school and I like learning.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

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.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

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

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

Too often we act – ask our schools to be truant officers, our teachers to be truant officers, because we’re giving them children who have, you know, they’re not ready to learn. And if they’re not ready to learn by the third grade, they know they’re behind.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.