50 of the Best Quotes About Education

Being an educator is not always the easiest job, but knowing you have made an impact on students’ lives can be so rewarding. Through all of the good times and bad, you continue to persevere and provide education to students of all backgrounds and abilities. We collected 50 of the best quotes about education to celebrate the best parts of teaching, learning, and the impact they have on the world.

Our Favorite Quotes About Education

“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.” —Malcolm X

“Education is one thing no one can take away from you.” —Elin Nordegren

“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” —Malcolm Forbes

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” —Sydney J. Harris

“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.” —Abigail Adams

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” —Benjamin Franklin

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” —Nelson Mandela

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. … Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” —Martin Luther King Jr.

“A person who won’t read has no advantage over a person who can’t read.” —Mark Twain

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” —Unknown

“Education is the key to unlock a golden door of freedom.” —George Washington Carver

“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” —Herbert Spencer

“The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.” —John F. Kennedy

“The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.” —George Santayana

“The roots of education … are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” —Aristotle

“Education must not simply teach work, it must teach Life.” —W.E.B Du Bois

“Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” —Horace Mann

“I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message.” —Steve Irwin

“Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.” —Sidney Hook

“All real education is the architecture of the soul.” —William Bennett

“Education is the key which will unlock the door of opportunity for you.” —Gordon B. Hinckley

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” —Maya Angelou

“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.” —Bill Nye

“The highest result of education is tolerance.” —Helen Keller

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” —Aristotle

“To teach is to learn twice.” —Joseph Joubert

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” —Plutarch

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” —Benjamin Franklin

“Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” —Confucius

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” —Mark Van Doren

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” —Margaret Mead

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” —Henry Ford

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” —Henry Brooks Adams

“They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel.” —Carl W. Buehner

“A good teacher must be able to put himself in the place of those who find learning hard.” —Eliphas Levi

“One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world.” —Malala Yousafzai

“Teachers are the one and only people who save nations.” —Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” —Isaac Asimov

“Real education must ultimately be limited to one who INSISTS on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.” —Ezra Pound

“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.” —Marian Wright Edelman

“It is only the ignorant who despise education.” —Publilius Syrus

“A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.” —Gwendolyn Brooks

“I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.” —William Morris

“Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.” —Nancy Astor

“It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.” —Norman Cousins

“The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.” —John Ruskin

“Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.” —Horace Mann

“Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.” —Daniel J. Boorstin

“Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated.” —Frederick William Robertson

“Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant.” —Edward Everett

Like these quotes about education? Check out these team-building quotes for classrooms and schools.

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