Education

Hannah Arendt (in Die Krise in der Erziehung, 1958) -  The child needs special care and protection so that nothing in the world can happen to it that could destroy it. But the world also needs protection so that it is not overwhelmed and destroyed by the onslaught of the new that rushes upon it with each new generation. German original: Das Kind bedarf einer besonderen Hütung und Pflege, damit ihm nichts von der Welt her geschieht, was es zerstören könnte. Aber auch die Welt bedarf eines Schutzes, damit sie von dem Ansturm des Neuen, das auf sie mit jeder neuen Generation einstürmt, nicht überrannt und zerstört werde. French:  L’enfant a besoin d'être tout particulièrement protégé et soigné pour éviter que le monde puisse le détruire. Mais ce monde aussi a besoin d'une protection qui l'empêche d'être dévasté et détruit par la vague des nouveaux venus qui déferle sur lui à chaque nouvelle génération.

Isaac Asimov (in Science Past, Science Future, 1975) - Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

Claude Bernard - C’est ce que nous pensons déjà connaître qui nous empêche souvent d’apprendre.

Ambrose Bierce - Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Samul Butler - Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

Albert Camus - Some people talk in their sleep. University lecturers talk while other people sleep. French original : Certaines personnes parlent pendant leur sommeil, les conférenciers eux parlent pendant le sommeil des autres.

Daniel Drezner - College students have been saying stupid things since the invention of college students.

Attributed to John Maynard Keynes - Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

Montesquieu - Nous recevons (...) trois éducations différentes ou contraires - celle de nos pères, celle de nos maîtres, celle du monde. Ce qu'on nous dit dans la dernière renverse toutes les idées des premières.

Aurora Rose Reynolds (in Until Lilly, 2014) - Experience is the hardest teacher. It gives you the test first, and the lesson afterward.

Ray Solomonoff (in A Formal Theory of Inductive Inference, 1964) - Proposition: learning is compressing complexity by accepting a given amount of uncertainty.

Thomas Sowell - In the academic world, diversity means black leftists, white leftists, female leftists, and Hispanic leftists. Demographic diversity conceals ideological conformity.

Spanish proveb - Cría cuervos y te sacaran los ojos. English: Raise crows and they will gouge out your eyes. French: Élève des corbeaux et ils te crèveront les yeux.

Rory Sutherland (in Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas that Don't Make Sense) - It's true that logic is usually the best way to succeed in an argument, but if you want to succeed in life it is not necessarily all that useful".

Traditional - If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

US Department of Education (A Nation at Risk, 1983) - If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

Voltaire (Lettre à M. Damillaville - 1er avril 1766) - Ce n'est pas le manœuvre qu'il faut instruire, c'est le bon bourgeois, c'est l'habitant des villes; (...) Quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu.

Max Weber (in Wissenchaft als Beruf, 1918) - The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize 'inconvenient' facts - I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions.

Steven Weinberg (in To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science) - As is natural for an academic, when I want to learn about something, I volunteer to teach a course on the subject.