Imagination is more important than knowledge.

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

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

The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.

Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

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.

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.

Civilization is a race between disaster and education.

There is no authority who decides what is a good idea.

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

I cannot live without books.

I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.