Education

"Most schooling is training for stupidity and conformity, and that's institutional, but occasionally you get a spark, somebody'll challenge your mind, make you think and so on, and that has a tremendous effect you just reach all sorts of people. Of course if you do it you may very have problems, you have to tread the narrow line. There are plenty of people who don't want students to think, they're afraid of the crisis of democracy. If people start thinking you get all these problems that I quoted before. They won't have enough humility to submit to a civil rule or they'll start trying to press their demands in the political arena and have ideas of their own, instead of beleiving what they're told. And privelage and power typically doesn't want that and so they react and the high school teacher that tries to get students to think may find oppression, firing and so on." Noam Chomsky

"In entering upon any scientific pursuit, one of the student’s first endeavours ought to be, to prepare his mind for the reception of truth, by dismissing, or at least loosening his hold on, all such crude and hastily adopted notions respecting the objects and relations he is about to examine as may tend to embarrass or mislead him.; and to strengthen himself, by something of an effort and a resolve, for the unprejudiced admission of any conclusion which shall appear to be supported by careful observation and logical argument, even should it prove of a nature adverse to notions he may have previously formed for himself, or taken up, without examination, on the credit of others." John Frederick William Herschel

"The shackles of mental control, perceptual filtering and cultural conditioning are harder to throw off today than ever before. We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever seen. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our entire consciousness seems to be subtly and relentlessly erased. The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely controlled. It is an exhaustive and endless task to constantly explain to people how most things of their everyday wisdom are scientifically planted in the public consciousness via a thousand media clips." Dr. Tim O’Shea

"Learning is like rowing against the current. As soon as you stop, you drift back." Edward Benjamin Britten

"The only difference between ‘propaganda’ and ‘education,’ really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda." Edward Bernays

"We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception." Walter Lippmann

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. Learning never exhausts the mind. Art is never finished, only abandoned. Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death. Water is the driving force of all nature.”" Leonardo da Vinci

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." Aristoteles

"Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed." John D. Rockefeller

"Not knowing is no shame — but refusing to learn is." Sokrates

"If we fail to find any of this—even at the highest energies we can reach—then we’ll have to do some serious rethinking and essentially start over from scratch. Which, of course, is exciting in its own way. Science is always exciting: if you don’t find anything, you simply have to come up with something new. Imagination is always the foundation of science." Wolfram Zeuner

"The public is not cognizant of the real value of education, and does not realize that education as a social force is not receiving the kind of attention it has the right to expect in a democracy." Edward Bernays

"Whether you want to uncover the secrets of the universe, or you just want to pursue a career in the 21st century, basic computer programming is an essential skill to learn." Stephen W. Hawking

"Whoever stops wanting to become better, stops being good." Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach