50 Inspirational Quotes That Illuminate the Power of Education

"Education without application is just entertainment."

- Tim Sanders

"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence."

- Abigail Adams

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

- W.B. Yeats

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

- Nelson Mandela

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go."

- Dr. Seuss

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

- Alvin Toffler

"It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts."

- Harry S. Truman

"Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible."

- Richard Feynman

"True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own."

- Nikos Kazantzakis

"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way."

- Doris Lessing

"Change is the end result of all true learning."

- Leo Buscaglia

"The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you."

- BB King

"If you think education is expensive, try estimating the cost of ignorance."

- Howard Gardner

"Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"I am still learning."

- Michelangelo

"You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over."

- Richard Branson

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."

- Robert Frost

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

- John F. Kennedy

"He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger."

- Confucius

"You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives."

- Clay P. Bedford

"Education is freedom."

- Paulo Freire

"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily."

- Thomas Szasz

"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live."

- Mortimer Adler

"Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning."

- William Arthur Ward

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

- John Dewey

"There is no greater education than one that is self-driven."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family."

- Kofi Annan

"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."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting."

- Edmund Burke

"The mere imparting of information is not education."

- Carter G. Woodson

"There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

"We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn."

- Peter Drucker

"I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught."

- Winston Churchill

"Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today."

- Malcolm X

"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it."

- Albert Einstein

"One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things."

- Frank Herbert

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow."

- Anthony J. D'Angelo

"One hour per day of study in your chosen field is all it takes. One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years you’ll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do."

- Earl Nightingale

"You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way."

- Marvin Minsky

"He who laughs most, learns best."

- John Cleese

"Research shows that you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius."

- Michael J. Gelb

"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon."

- E. M. Forster

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."

- Henry Ford

"In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn."

- Alvin Toffler

"You are always a student, never a master. You have keep moving forward."

- Conrad Hall

"Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand."

- Chinese Proverb

"Education cost money, but then so does ignorance."

- Claus Moser

"What sculpture is to a block of marble education is to the human soul."

- Joseph Addison

"Learn continually. There’s always ‘one more thing’ to learn!"

- Steve Jobs

"What we learn with pleasure we never forget."

- Alfred Mercier

"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it."

- Margaret Fuller

"Never let formal education get in the way of your learning."

- Mark Twain

"The most important attitude that can be found is the desire to go on learning."

- John Dewey

"The greatest teacher, failure is."

- Yoda

"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."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Education in the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

- Nelson Mandela

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

- Aristotle

"It is better to learn late than never."

- Publilius Syrus

"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change."

- Carl Rogers

"Education is the movement from darkness to light."

- Allan Bloom

"Education’s purpose is to replace and empty mind with an open one."

- Malcolm Forbes

"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you."

- BB King

"Education is hanging around until you've caught on."

- Robert Lee Frost

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

- C. S. Lewis

"The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark."

- Thomas Paine

"The only real failure in life is one not learned from."

- Anthony J. D'Angelo

"Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom."

- George Washington Carver

"The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future."

- Brian Tracy

"Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardour and attended with diligence."

- Abigail Adams

"Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection."

- Mark Twain

"The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one."

- Malcolm Forbes

"If knowledge is power, then learning is a superpower."

- Jim Kwik

"Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant."

- Edward Everett

"Education is the key to unlock a golden door of freedom."

- George Washington Carver

"Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it."

- Marian Wright Edelman

"Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army."

- Edward Everett

"One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world."

- Malala Yousafzai

"The great aim of education is not knowledge but action."

- Herbert Spencer

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress in every society, in every family."

- Kofi Annan

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young."

- Henry Ford

"Education is one thing no one can take away from you."

- Elin Nordegren

"Education is the key that unlocks the golden door to freedom."

- George Washington Carver

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."

- Albert Einstein

"Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The ability to read, write, and analyze; the confidence to stand up and demand justice and equality; the qualifications and connections to get your foot in the door and take your seat at the table — all of that starts with education."

- Michelle Obama

"The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done."

- Jean Piaget

"The content of a book holds the power of education and it is with this power that we can shape our future and change lives."

- Malala Yousafzai

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

- John F. Kennedy

"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today."

- Malcolm X

"Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field."

- Brian Tracy

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Being a student is easy. Learning requires actual work."

- William Crawford

"It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning."

- Claude Bernard

"I never learned from a man who agreed with me."

- Robert A. Heinlein

"The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue."

- Antisthenes

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

- Benjamin Franklin

"You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it."

- John Updike

"There is divine beauty in learning… To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps."

- Elie Wiesel

"Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death."

- Albert Einstein

"Good questions outrank easy answers."

- Paul Samuelson

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't."

- Anatole France

"Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time."

- Rabindranath Tagore

"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."

- James Thurber

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government."

- Thomas Jefferson

"My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors."

- Maya Angelou

"The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives."

- Robert M. Hutchins

"The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated."

- James Baldwin

"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence."

- Abigail Adams

"A person who won’t read has no advantage over a person who can’t read."

- Mark Twain

"The roots of education … are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."

- Aristotle

"Education must not simply teach work, it must teach Life."

- W.E.B. Du Bois

"Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery."

- Horace Mann

"Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system."

- Sidney Hook

"Education is the key which will unlock the door of opportunity for you."

- Gordon B. Hinckley

"I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better."

- Maya Angelou

"The highest result of education is tolerance."

- Helen Keller

"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."

- Aristotle

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."

- Plutarch

"Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace."

- Confucius

"The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go."

- Dr. Seuss

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

- Henry Adams

"A good teacher must be able to put himself in the place of those who find learning hard."

- Eliphas Levi

"Teachers are the one and only people who save nations."

- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is."

- Isaac Asimov

"Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity."

- Nancy Astor

"It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete."

- Norman Cousins

"Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge."

- Horace Mann

"Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated."

- Frederick William Robertson

"Any fool can know. The point is to understand."

- Albert Einstein

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

- Albert Einstein

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

- Confucius

"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."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel."

- Socrates

"Learning is not attained by chance; it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence."

- Abigail Adams

"Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?"

- Erich Fromm

"Learning is not attained by chance; it must be sought for with ardor and diligence."

- Abigail Adams

"Children must be taught how to think, not what to think."

- Margaret Mead

"He that loves reading has everything within his reach."

- William Godwin

"Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it."

- Alan Moore

"All the world is my school and all humanity is my teacher."

- George Whitman

"Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know."

- Daniel J. Boorstin

"Everything is a learning experience."

- Angus T. Jones

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery."

- Mark van Doren

"To teach is to learn twice."

- Joseph Joubert

"I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few."

- William Morris

"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary."

- Vince Lombardi

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."

- Helen Keller

"The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values."

- William S. Burroughs

"What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school, but a different way of looking at the world and learning."

- Chuck Grassley

"We learn from failure, not from success!"

- Bram Stoker

"All real education is the architecture of the soul."

- William Bennett

"A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life."

- Norman Cousins

"A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers."

- Gwendolyn Brooks

"Education makes a people easy to lead but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave."

- Peter Brougham

"A child without education is like a bird without wings."

- Tibetan Proverb

"It is only the ignorant who despise education."

- Publilius Syrus

"Real education must ultimately be limited to one who INSISTS on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding."

- Ezra Pound

"They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel."

- Carl W. Buehner

"I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message."

- Steve Irwin

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

- John Ruskin

"The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas."

- George Santayana

"The purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows."

- Sydney J. Harris

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

- Blaise Pascal

"The first half of my life I went to school, the second half of my life I got an education."

- Mark Twain

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

- Maimonides

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty."

- Henry Ford

"The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows."

- Sydney J. Harris

"A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Learning is synthesizing seemingly divergent ideas and data."

- Terry Heick

"The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly."

- Wendell Berry

"Education is a continual process. It’s like a bicycle…if you don’t pedal, you don’t go forward."

- George Weah

"Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key."

- Tom Colicchio

"A man’s mind, stretched by new ideas, may never return to its original dimensions."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another."

- G.K. Chesterton

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."

- Victor Hugo

"Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation."

- Walter Cronkite

"Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."

- Malcolm S. Forbes

"I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma."

- Eartha Kitt

"Learning is not compulsory… Neither is survival."

- W. Edwards Deming

"Education is the vaccine of violence."

- Edward James Olmos

"You learn something every day if you pay attention."

- Ray LeBlond

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."

- Voltaire

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."

- Oscar Wilde

"Learn to think continentally."

- Alexander Hamilton

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

- Arthur Ashe

"Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough."

- Alain de Botton

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more so that we may fear less."

- Marie Curie

"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change."

- Stephen Hawking

"Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t."

- Bill Nye

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

- Derek Bok

"An understanding of the natural world and what’s in it is a source of not only great curiosity but great fulfillment."

- David Attenborough

"Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude."

- Zig Ziglar

"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire."

- William Butler Yeats

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself."

- Chinese Proverb

"The expert in anything was once a beginner."

- Helen Hayes

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."

"A man who asks is a fool for five minutes. A man who never asks is a fool for life."

"Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back."

"If you are willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you."