I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly - they'll go through anything. You read and you?re pierced.

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

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

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Many much-learned men have no intelligence.

The schools ain't what they used to be and never was.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

I think that kids have a greater capacity for processing things than we give them credit for.

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

Educate the children and it won't be necessary to punish the men.

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.

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.

No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.

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

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.

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