Most sayings about education refer to the subject in a positive light. After all, education is a good thing, right?
Wrong – according to a number of people, who are highly respected in their various professions.
Many philosophers, authors, poets, scientists, politicians, and comedians do not see traditional education as that beneficial.
Their attitude is best summed up in the words of the famous economist, John Maynard Keynes:
Education: The inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent
And that’s the first of the 25 sayings about education that may cause you to think differently.
The sayings may be witty, cynical, thoughtful, or humorous, but there is more than a grain of truth in many of them.
The Life Daily team, in making this selection, thought that it would be refreshing for you to look at a serious subject in a non-serious way – just for a change.
You may be surprised to find that you actually agree with them
Albert Einstein
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
Oscar Wilde:
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Mark Twain:
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
A lecture is a process by which the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either.
Robert Green Ingersoll:
It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
Victor Hugo:
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
Theodore Roosevelt:
A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
Robert Frost:
Education doesn’t change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.
Will Rogers:
America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.
Peter Drucker:
When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
Michel de Montaigne:
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
Heinrich Heine:
If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.
G. M. Trevelyan:
Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
Bill Cosby:
Sex education may be a good idea in the schools, but I don’t believe the kids should be given homework.
Woody Allen:
I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.
Bertrand Russell:
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
George Orwell:
I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.
Gilbert K. Chesterton:
The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.
Dennis Miller:
You know there is a problem with the education system when you realize that out of the 3 R’s only one begins with an R.
John W. Gardner:
I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder that we could have tolerated anything so primitive.
Alexandre Dumas:
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
Noam Chomsky:
Education is imposed ignorance.
Were these sayings about education what you would have expected from such highly educated people? Have your say in the comments feed below.
