Better know nothing than half-know many things.

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.

I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.

Dare to think for yourself.

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.

To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.