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.

To educate in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.

Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for a trickster and catch him at first attempt, but beware of an honest man.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say "I don't know."

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Those disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory, sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.

The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.

Public education has not produced an educated public.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

As an apple is not in any proper sense an apple until it is ripe, so a human being is not in any proper sense a human being until he is educated.

The most crucial use of knowledge and education is to understand the importance of developing a good heart.

You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

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

Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man’s task.

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

In walking, the will and the muscles are so accustomed to working together and performing their task with so little expenditure of force that the intellect is left comparatively free.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

Understanding a question is half an answer.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.