The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it's the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
A child miseducated is a child lost.
Suddenly degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job it's because you didn't want one. And I didn't want one, frankly.
My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.
Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
Educate the children and it won't be necessary to punish the men.
Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life
The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.
With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of rule; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say I have great respect for the semi-colon; it's a useful little chap.
