“An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people- it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the burden of the mystery
“The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have
“Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
“It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best to at least rearrange their prejudices once in a while
“Less than fifteen percent of the people do any original thinking on any subject . . . The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think
“If it were admitted that the great object is to read and enjoy a language, and the stress of the teaching were placed on the few things absolutely essential to this result, all might in their own way arrive there, and rejoice in its flowers.
“It is a greater work to educate a child, in the true and larger sense of the word, than to rule a state
“I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries
“A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense
“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed and the prejudices of their education.
“An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind. 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