Most of us believe, or should believe, that every child can learn, given the opportunity, but try substitute teaching just once and you will see firsthand the socioeconomic issues that distract our kids from taking advantage of that opportunity.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

When I take my kid to school, all the parents stop and stare.

K to 12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things.

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

On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education.

Our teachers deserve better feedback.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

What gift has providence bestowed on man that is so dear to him as his children?

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

There is no education like adversity.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

I purposely don’t talk about money, because people are already skeptical about TV preachers. But I do say that I want you to be blessed. To me, prosperity is having health, having great children, having peace, good relationships. It’s not about the money.

I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.

My father will anticipate everything. He will leave you and me no chance to do a great and brilliant deed.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

Women tend to be more intuitive, or to admit to being intuitive, and maybe the hard science approach isn’t so attractive. The way that science is taught is very cold. I would never have become a scientist if I had been taught like that.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

Standing in support of children is something we should all be able to get behind, regardless of party affiliation.

If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

You have to stay in school. You have to. You have to go to college. You have to get your degree. Because that’s the one thing people can’t take away from you is your education. And it is worth the investment.

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.

I’m all self-taught. I never had a teacher. Even for English, and French, and German, I hardly went to school.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

Every wall is a door.

I read to my kid, but I can’t stand reading.

The goal for me is always to have the opportunity to work in different genres. This is a great and exciting time in my career, where I can have the opportunity to work in different genres, and also I recognize there’s not a lot of actors who have that opportunity and I’m grateful for it.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents are their most important role models.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

Touch a scientist and you touch a child.

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

Study hard so that you can master technology, which allows us to master nature.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

The reason children accept discipline from their parents is because they know their parents love them.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.

We can’t afford not to educate girls and give women the power and the access that they need.

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven’t had a lesson since.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the ’40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we, as a people, can be engaged in.

Through the ages, many of His children have had access to the blessings of the gospel, but many more have not.

I didn’t want to become a professor or get tenure or teach or anything. All I wanted to do was get a degree because Louis Leakey said I needed one, which was right, and once I succeeded I could get back to the field.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.