Education Quotes

by Liz Hurley

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“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

Education enables us to adapt and flourish, engenders a spirit of inquiry, broadens horizons and equips us to tackle problems head on. It changes lives.

Here’s a list of over 100 quotes about education divided into the following categories:

  • Our top ten quotes about education
  • Inspirational quotes about education
  • Education quotes for students
  • Early childhood education quotes
  • Famous Education quotes
  • Albert Einstein quotes on education
  • Education quotes – Nelson Mandela

Top ten education quotes

  • “If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.” – Chinese proverb
  • “Education is not the filling of a pot but the lighting of a fire.” – B. Yeats
  • “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
  • “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X
  • “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi
  • “Education is a better guarantee of liberty than a standing army.” – Edward Everett
  • “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Andy McIntyre
  • “A first class system of early childhood education is the hallmark of a caring and civilized society.” Andy Hargreaves
  • “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” – John Dewey
  • “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” – Albert Einstein

Inspirational quotes about education

“Education is not the filling of a pot but the lighting of a fire.” – B. Yeats

  1. “If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.” – Chinese proverb
  2. “Education is a better guarantee of liberty than a standing army.” – Edward Everett
  3. “You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.” – Brigham Young
  4. “What a sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.” – Joseph Addison
  5. “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Andy McIntyre
  6. “If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn't need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.” – Jim Rohn
  7. “The highest result of education is tolerance.” Helen Keller
  8. “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” – Robert Frost
  9. “Be careful. Everything you say, every single day, may be recorded in your students’ hearts forever.” – LouAnne Johnson in Dangerous Minds
  10. “Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.” – Mark Twain
  11. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”― C.S. Lewis
  12. “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” ― C.S. Lewis
  13.  “Nine tenths of education is encouragement.” – Anatole France
  14. “It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time – for we are bound by that- but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.” -T.S. Eliot
  15. “Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.” – John Hersey
  16.  “Education is the ability to meet life’s situations.” – Dr. John G. Hibben
  17. “It is as impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.” – Agnes Repplierg
  18. “Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
  19. “If a seed of a lettuce will not grow, we do not blame the lettuce. Instead, the fault lies with us for not having nourished the seed properly.” – Buddhist proverb
  20. “When you educate one person you change a life, when you educate many you can change the world.” – Shai Reshef
  21. “Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.” – Marian Wright Edelman
  22. “Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.”– Chanakya
  23. “The direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future life.” – Plato
  24. “Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” – Confucius
  25. “Educators are the only people who lose sleep over other people’s children.” – Nicholas A. Ferroni
  26. “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.” – Japanese Proverb
  27. “Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.” – Aristotle
  28. “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” Aristotle
  29. “Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.” – Ernest Dimnet
  30. “The purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” – Sydney J. Harris
  31. “If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother, and the teacher.” – Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam
  32. “Education is supposed to juice your curiosity, not diminish or sate it.” – Walter Isaacson
  33. “Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” – Walter Cronkite
  34. “Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.” – D J Boorstin
  35. “A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.” – Norman Cousins
  36. “He who opens a school door closes a prison.” – Victor Hugo
  37. “The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.” – Robert M Hutchins
  38. “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” – Herbert Spencer
  39. “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another,” G K Chesterton
  40. “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” – Confucius
  41. “It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education, than to have education without common sense.” R G Ingersoll
  42. “Education is the progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” – Will Durrant
  43. “Education makes a people easy to lead but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.” – Peter Brougham
  44. “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
  45. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle
  46. “The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.” – Diognes
  47. “Education is the movement from darkness to light.” – Allan Bloom
  48. “The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.” – William S. Burroughs
  49. “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain

Education quotes for students

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X

  1. “Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” – Anthony J. D’Angelo
  2. “Education is a continual process, it’s like a bicycle… If you don’t pedal you don’t go forward.” – George Weah
  3. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi
  4. “Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.” – Vernon Howard
  5.  “Learning is not attained by chance; it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.” – Abigail Adams
  6. “Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.” – Oprah Winfrey 
  7. “Only the educated are free.” – Epictetus
  8. “Despise school and remain a fool.” – German proverb
  9. “They cannot stop me. I will get my education, if it is in the home, school, or anyplace.” – Malala Yousafzai
  10. “A child without education is like a bird without wings.” -Tibetan Proverb
  11. “The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss
  12. “Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.” – William Haley
  13. “Education is the key that unlocks the golden door to freedom.” – George Washington Carver
  14. “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” – Malcolm Forbes
  15. “Being a student is easy. Learning requires actual work.” – William Crawford
  16. “A mind, stretched by new ideas, may never return to its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr
  17. “The best education is not given to students; it is drawn out of them.” – Gerald Belcher
  18. “The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think – rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.” – Bill Beattie
  19. “You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.” –Lyndon B. Johnson
  20. “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
  21. “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” – Carl Rogers
  22. “To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.” – Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
  23. “The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.” – Thomas Paine
  24. “The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.” – Plato
  25. “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.” – Henry Ford
  26. “Don’t make up your mind. Knowing” is the end of learning.” – Naval Ravikant

Early childhood education quotes

“A first class system of early childhood education is the hallmark of a caring and civilized society.” Andy Hargreaves

  1. “Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play, children learn how to learn.” – O. Fred Donaldson
  2. “To reach real peace in the world, we will have to begin with the children.” – Mahatma Gandhi
  3. “A child miseducated is a child lost.” – John F. Kennedy
  4. “Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of society.”- Maria Montessori
  5. “The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.” – John Lubbock
  6. “The best way to improve the American workforce in the 21st century is to invest in early childhood education, to ensure that even the most disadvantaged children have the opportunity to succeed along side their more advantaged peers.” – James Heckman
  7. “The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss
  8. “A child without education is like a bird without wings.” -Tibetan Proverb
  9. “Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.” – Yoda

Famous education quotes

“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” – John Dewey

  1. “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” – Albert Einstein
  2.  “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
  3. “Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.” – Nelson Mandela
  4.  “From the poorest of countries to the richest of nations, education is the key to moving forward in any society.” – Nelson Mandela
  5. “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.” – Albert Einstein
  6. “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” – Albert Einstein
  7. “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” – Aristotle
  8. “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
  9. “Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” -Martin Luther King Jr.
  10. “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” – Theodore Roosevelt
  11. “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin
  12. “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” – Abraham Lincoln
  13. “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” – Oscar Wilde
  14. “The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.” – John F. Kennedy
  15. “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress in every society, in every family.” – Kofi Annan
  16. “The principal goal of education in schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.” – Jean Piaget

Albert Einstein quotes on education

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

  1. “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” 
  2. “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” 
  3. “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
  4. “Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.”
  5. “’I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.’’
  6. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
  7. ‘’It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.’‘
  8.  “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity.’’
  9. ”The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgement should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge. . .” 

 Nelson Mandela Education quotes

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

  1.  “Education is the great engine to personal development.” 
  2. “Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it’s important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country.”
  3. “Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
  4.  “Educating all of our children must be one of our most urgent priorities. We all know that education, more than anything else, improves your chances of building better lives.” 
  5.  “From the poorest of countries to the richest of nations, education is the key to moving forward in any society.”

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