Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

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.

The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.

The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.

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

I am a part of everything that I have read.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Learn as though you would never be able to master it; hold it as though you would be in fear of losing it.

Many much-learned men have no intelligence.

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.

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

The fullness of knowledge only comes through the awareness of ignorance.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible but more mysterious.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.

To every action there is always an equal and opposite or contrary, reaction

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.