You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

I feel Anglo-American.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.

Everybody who makes any kind of policy needs to substitute teach. But you’ve got to be a real teacher. You can’t just go to a couple of classes with the regular teacher there. It is an incredibly hard job.

I believe that in the pursuit of education, individual desire is more influential than institution, and personal faith more forceful than faculty.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

I love story songs because I’ve always loved books.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

I was a smart kid, but I hated school.

What’s fascinating is, people in Washington would rather spend time in Hollywood, and people in Hollywood would rather spend time in Washington.

Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

I didn’t go to university. Didn’t even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

Are we a nation that educates the world’s best and brightest in our universities, only to send them home to create businesses in countries that compete against us? Or are we a nation that encourages them to stay and create jobs, businesses, and industries right here in America?

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

Too much of what is called ‚education‘ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

Money is kind of a base subject. Like water, food, air and housing, it affects everything yet for some reason the world of academics thinks it’s a subject below their social standing.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

I go to school the youth to learn the future.

I never let schooling interfere with my education.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

I like school and I like learning.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

My mother is not educated but keeps in touch with world events through news on TV.

Most people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

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.

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

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.

The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and the true teacher is the learner.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

I went to a lovely school, and I got an incredible education. And I actually think that my education is what really sets me apart, ‚cause I’m very smart.