If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Public education has not produced an educated public.

College isn't the place to go for ideas.

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

Educate the children and it won’t be necessary to punish the men.

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

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

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.

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.

I have always regarded that Constitution as the most remarkable work known to me in modern times to have been produced by the human intellect, at a single stroke (so to speak), in its application to political affairs.

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

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.

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

Intelligent people tend to have less friends than the average person. The smarter you are, the more selective you become.

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

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

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.

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

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.

An organizations ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked.

I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand.

Personal growth is not a matter of learning new information but of unlearning old limits.

You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.

If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.

A student is not a container you have to fill, but a torch you have to light up.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.