This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I strongly believe that education is the best means for people to progress in life. It gives people many, many choices for the kind of life they want to live, and the kind of lifestyle they want to have. But more importantly I think – and it’s a cliché, but it’s true – a well-educated society maintains a rich democracy. When our society is not well educated, democracy suffers. The other reason that I strongly support public education is that it is the best means for people who come from poor economic background to escape poverty. The obstacles are greater, but at least the opportunities are there. Education helps to level the playing field.
Democracy | Education | Life | Life | Means | People | Progress | Public | Reason | Society | Society | Think |
Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
The chief object of education is not to learn things; nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn things.
I may safely predict that the education of the future will be inventive-minded. It will believe so profoundly in the high value of the inventive or creative spirit that it will set itself to develop that spirit by all means within its power.
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.
Circumstances | Education | Race | Truth | Learn |
Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.
Education develops the intellect; and the intellect distinguishes man from other creatures. It is education that enables man to harness nature and utilize her resources for the well-being and improvement of his life. The key for the betterment and completeness of modern living is education. But, 'Man cannot live by bread alone'. Man, after all, is also composed of intellect and soul. Therefore, education in general, and higher education in particular, must aim to provide, beyond the physical, food for the intellect and soul. That education which ignores man's intrinsic nature, and neglects his intellect and reasoning power cannot be considered true education.
Education | Improvement | Man | Nature | Power | Intellect |
We need science education to produce scientists, but we need it equally to create literacy in the public. Man has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world about him, and science gives today the only world picture which we can consider as valid. It gives an understanding of the inside of the atom and of the whole universe, or the peculiar properties of the chemical substances and of the manner in which genes duplicate in biology. An educated layman can, of course, not contribute to science, but can enjoy and participate in many scientific discoveries which as constantly made. Such participation was quite common in the 19th century, but has unhappily declined. Literacy in science will enrich a person's life.
Education | Man | Need | Science | Understanding | Will | World |
The whole edifice of Indian civilization is imbued with spiritual meaning. The close interdependence and perfect harmonization of the two serve to counteract the natural tendency of Indian philosophy to become recondite and esoteric, removed from life and the task of the education of society. In the Hindu world, the folklore and popular mythology carry the truths and teachings of the philosophers to the masses. In this symbolic form the ideas do not have to be watered down to be popularized. The vivid, perfectly appropriate pictorial script preserves the doctrines without the slightest damage to their sense.
Civilization | Education | Ideas | Life | Life | Philosophy | Truths |
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
There has been ... an enormous waste of human mental and physical resources in premature revolutionary thrusts, ill-planned, dogmatic, essentially unscientific reconstructions and restorations of the social order, during the past hundred years. This was the inevitable first result of the discrediting of those old and superseded mental adaptations which were embodied in the institutions and education of the past. They discredited themselves and left the world full of problems.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, — the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.
The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.
Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
The trouble with cheap, specialized education is that you never stop paying for it.
Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
Those who make a distinction between education and entertainment don't know the first thing about either.
Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams
The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned with it, teachers and students.
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
Right education should help the student, not only to develop his capacities, but to understand his own highest interest.
Education | Understand |
The purpose of education is to cultivate right relationship, not only between individuals, but also between the individual and society; and that is why it is essential that education should, above all, help the individual to understand his own psychological process. Intelligence lies in understanding oneself and going above and beyond oneself; but there cannot be intelligence as long as there is fear.
Education | Individual | Intelligence | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Understanding | Understand |
Jacques Barzun, fully Jacques Martin Barzun
The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.