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

Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.

The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

It is better to know how to learn than to know.

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.

Education is a system of imposed ignorance.

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

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.

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

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

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.

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

A child miseducated is a child lost.

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

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