I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of rule; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say I have great respect for the semi-colon; it's a useful little chap.
The secret of life is not enjoyment but education through experience.
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.
It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.
When you know better you do better.
What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.
I think that kids have a greater capacity for processing things than we give them credit for.
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.
Suddenly degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job it's because you didn't want one. And I didn't want one, frankly.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so.
The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.
The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.