170+ Best Quotes on Education and Knowledge

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A great quote can guide someone in the right direction. It can give them the motivation they need to achieve their wildest dreams. When struck with hopelessness about the future, someone can place an educational quote above their desk or in their classroom as inspiration. Here are some of the best quotes on education that will inspire any age group — from a kid to a college student to a teacher:

Growth Mindset Quotes for Kids and College Students:

1. “Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.” –George Evans

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

3. “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ― Robert Frost

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

5. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ― Albert Einstein

6. “Tell me, and I’ll forget; show me, and I may remember; involve me, and I’ll understand.” ― Chinese proverb

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

8. “The learning process continues until the day you die.” – Kirk Douglas

9. “Change is the end result of all true learning.” – Leo Buscaglia

10. “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”— Carl Rogers

11. “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” – John Dewey

12. “When girls are educated, their countries become stronger and more prosperous.” – Michelle Obama

13. “All things good to know are difficult to learn.” – Greek proverb

14. “Education is learning what you didn’t know you didn’t know.” – George Boas

15. “It is personal. That’s what an education does. It makes the world personal.” ― Cormac McCarthy

16. “One learns by doing a thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.” – Sophocles

17. “Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life.” – Brigham Young

18. “He who opens a school door closes a prison.” ― Victor Hugo

19. “Education is no longer thought of as a preparation for adult life, but as a continuing process of growth and development from birth until death.” –Stephen Mitchell

20. “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X

21. “The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.” ― Michel Legrand

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

23. “Men, in teaching others, learn themselves.” – Thomas Lodge

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

25. “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” – Andy McIntyre

26. “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” ― Mark Twain

27. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ― W.B. Yeats

28. “The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.” – Diogenes of Sinope

29. “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” – Aristotle

30. “Education is not the piling on of learning, information, data, facts, skills, or abilities – that’s training or instruction – but is rather making visible what is hidden as a seed.” – Thomas Moore

31. “The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.” – William Burrough

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

33. “Education is not just about going to school and getting a degree. It’s about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life. – Shakuntala Devi

34. “Only the educated are free.” ― Epictetus

35. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

36. “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” – Kofi Annan

37. “What we learn with pleasure we never forget.” – Alfred Mercier

38. “I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.” – Steven Wright

39. “A good education is a foundation for a better future.” – Elizabeth Warren

40. “Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” ― John Holt

41. “You learn something every day if you pay attention.” – Ray LeBlond

42. “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.” – Mark Twain

43. “Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody. ” ― Jane Austen

44. “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” – Leonardo da Vinci

45. “Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” – Leonardo da Vinci

46. “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” ― Thomas Jefferson

47. “The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.” – Confucius

48. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe

49. “Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.” – John Adams

50. “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”― Aristotle

Inspirational General Education Quotes:

51. “The minute that you’re not learning, I believe you’re dead.” – Jack Nicholson

52. “Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.” – William Haley

53. “To me, education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul.” ― Muriel Spark

54. “The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.” – Aristotle

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

56. “It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.” – Claude Bernard

57. “A woman with an education may be able to spend more time sitting in a chair instead of lying on her back. A sound advantage, I should think.” ― Anne Bishop

58. “You cannot open a book without learning something.” – Confucius

59. “When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.” ― John Taylor Gatto

60. “Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

61. “Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” – Og Mandino

62. “Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.” – Edward Everett

63. “They know enough who know how to learn.” – Henry Adams

64. “Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” ― Walter Cronkite

65. “Education is the ability to meet life’s situations.” — Dr. John G. Hibben

66. “Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.” – Plato

67. “Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t. ” ― Pete Seeger

68. “Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” – Will Durant

69. “I think you learn more if you’re laughing at the same time.” ― Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

70. “Education is the mother of leadership.” – Wendell Willkie

71. “Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.” ― Mark Twain

72. “With guns, you can kill terrorists, with an education you can kill terrorism.” ― Malala Yousafzai

73. “They know enough upon the subject of education… I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we, as a people, may be engaged in.” — Abraham Lincoln

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

75. “Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.” – Claude Bernard

76. “Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.” ― Dr. W. Edwards Deming

77. “Ensuring quality higher education is one of the most important things we can do for future generations.” ― Ron Lewis

78. “Education is the transmission of civilization.” – Will Durant

79. “Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.” ― Mark Twain

80. “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” – Confucius

81. “Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back.” – Chinese proverb

82. “The progress of the world depends almost entirely upon education.” – George Eastman

83. “Education is helping the child realize his potentialities.” – Eric Fromm

84. “Let the improvement of yourself keep you so busy that you have no time to criticize others.”― Roy T. Bennett

85. “You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”― Douglas Adams

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

87. “Education is a continual process; it’s like a bicycle… If you don’t pedal, you don’t go forward.” – George Weah

88. “Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.” ― Frank Herbert

89. “Education is the art of making man ethical.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

90. “I agree that a love of reading is a great gift for a parent to pass on to his or her child.” – Ann Brashares

91. “The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”– Dr. Seuss

92. “Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.” – Thomas Szasz

93. “Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.” – Ernest Dimnet

94. “All men by nature desire to know.” ― Aristotle

95.  “Wisdom…. comes not from age, but from education and learning.” ― Anton Chekhov

96. “The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth” ― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

97. “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”― Albert Einstein

98. “Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.” – Anatole France

99. “The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.” – Voltaire

100. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

Inspiring Quotes About Learning and Education:

101. “Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.” – John Hersey

102. “You are always a student, never a master. You have to keep moving forward.” – Conrad Hall

103. “Every artist was at first an amateur.” – Ralph W. Emerson

104. “By seeking and blundering we learn.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

105. “Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” – Anthony J. D’Angelo

106. “Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.” – Chanakya

107. “Knowledge will bring you the opportunity to make a difference.” ― Claire Fagin

108. “We learn from failure, not from success!”― Bram Stoker

109. “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”— Oliver Wendell Holmes

110. “All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind.” –Martin Fisher

111. “If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.” – Jim Rohn

112. “Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” – Confucius

113. “Education should light a fire within us to improve us and help our world.” – Sarah Josepf

114. “It is as impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.” ― Agnes Repplierg

115. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” ― Jim Rohn

116. “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” — Henry Ford

117. “We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” – Lloyd Alexander

118. “The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.” – Tom Bodett

119. “The content of a book holds the power of education, and it is with this power that we can shape our future and change lives.” – Malala Yousafzai

120. “The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you.” ― B.B. King

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

122. “Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.”— Chinese Proverb

123. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” –Socrates

124. “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton

125. “Your library is your paradise.” – Desiderius Erasmus

126. “Education is the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.” – Ernest Dimnet

127. “By education, I mean an all-round drawing of the best in child and man in body, mind, and spirit.” – Mahatma Gandhi

128. “The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.” – Confucius

129. “What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.” – Henry David Thoreau

Education Quotes to Become a Better Teacher:

130. “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” – Alexander the Great

131. “The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.” – Alexandra K. Trenfor

132. “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” ― Henry B Adams

133. “A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.”— Thomas Carruthers

134. “Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.”― Roger Lewin

135. “The most beautiful things in the creating of the child are his ‘mistakes.’ The more a child’s work is full of these individual mistakes, the more wonderful it is. And the more a teacher removes them from the child’s work the duller, more desolate and impersonal it becomes.” ― Franz Cizek

136. “Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.” ― John W. Gardner

137. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” ― William Arthur Ward

138. “You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.” ― Clay P. Bedford

139. “Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?” ― Erich Fromm

140. “To teach is to learn twice.” ― Joseph Joubert

141. “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

142. “Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” ― Chinese proverb

143. “Good teaching is 1/4 preparation and 3/4 theatre.” – Gail Goldwin

144. It takes a big heart to help shape little minds.” – Unknown

145.  “Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” – John Steinbeck

146. “The purpose of education is to make good human beings with skill and expertise… Enlightened human beings can be created by teachers.” ― A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

147. “The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves.” – Joseph Campbell

Quotes About Real Education Outside a Classroom:

148. “Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.” – Mark Twain

149. “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain

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

151. “They cannot stop me. I will get my education, if it is in the home, school, or anyplace.” – Malala Yousafzai

152. “Education must not simply teach work – it must teach Life.“ – W. E. B. Du Bois

153. “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” – Albert Einstein

Education Quotes that will Make You Think:

154.  “Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism.” ― David M. Burns

155. “Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding line, and no way of knowing how near the harbor was. “Light! Give me light!” was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.” ― Helen Keller

156. “If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” ― Ben Franklin

157. “You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety.” ― Abraham Maslow

158. “Looking ahead, I believe that the underlying importance of higher education, of science, of technology, of research and scholarship to our quality of life, to the strength of our economy, to our security in many dimensions will continue to be the most important message.” ― Charles Vest

159. “It’s the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” ― Aristotle

160. “We should look at the kind of work that goes into acquiring a liberal education at the college level in the same way that we look at the grueling apprenticeship that goes into becoming a master chef: something that understandably attracts only a limited number of people. Most students at today’s colleges choose not to take the courses that go into a liberal education because the capabilities they want to develop lie elsewhere. These students are not lazy, any more than students who don’t want to spend hours learning how to chop carrots into a perfect eighth-inch dice are lazy. A liberal education just doesn’t make sense for them.” ― Charles Murray

161. “Freedom allows choice and liberal education advocates for a specific choice: that the purpose of freedom is to enable creative, critically thinking, caring individuals to build healthy societies that serve universal (not just parochial) ends.” ― Gregory S. Prince, Jr.

162. “Kids don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.” – Jim Henson

163. “Our education system produces educational certificates and not educated knowledgeable minds which only means something is wrong with the system. We need to bring out the creative within the people with knowledge and education not the burden of debt from degrees and certificates” ― Aiyaz Uddin

164. “The mark of higher education isn’t the knowledge you accumulate in your head. It’s the skills you gain about how to learn.” Adam Grant

165. “Our education system is like a money plant, which looks beautiful with big green leaves, but fails to produce any fruit or a flower. Undoubtedly, we are a home to the best doctors, scientists, poets, artists, and whatnot. But I feel, we miserably fail to evoke humanism, compassion, and tolerance in students.” ― Misbah Khan

166. “A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.” ― Horace Mann

167. “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” ― Zig Ziglar

168. “What sculpture is to a block of marble education is to the human soul.” ― Joseph Addison

169. “The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child’s own natural desire to learn.” ― Maria Montessori

170. “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” ― Oscar Wilde

171. “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” — Andy McIntyre