Famous Quotes & Sayings

William J. Clinton

Literacy is not a luxury, it is a right and a responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens.

William James

To begin with our knowledge grows in spots. ..What you first gain, ... is probably a small amount of new information, a few new definitions, or distinctions, or points of view. But while these special ideas are being added, the rest of your knowledge stands still, and only gradually will you line up your previous opinions with the novelties I am trying to instill, and to modify to some slight degree their mass. ..Your mind in such processes is strained, and sometimes painfully so, between its older beliefs and the novelties which experience brings along.

William James

The most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes. We accordingly see that the moment a thing becomes connected with the fortunes of the self, it forthwith becomes an interesting thing.

William James

An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.

William James

It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association

William James

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.

William James

Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life

William James

If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is to make certain that they have something in their minds to attend with, when you begin to talk. That something can consist in nothing but a previous lot of ideas already interesting in themselves, and of such a nature that the incoming novel objects which you present can dovetail into them and form with them some kind of a logically associated or systematic whole.

William James

Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.

William James

Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.

William James

Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.

William James

In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds of conception at a later age.

William James

All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting; and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to; the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on.

William James

There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life.

William James

Feed the growing human being, feed him with the sort of experience for which from year to year he shows a natural craving, and he will develop in adult life a sounder sort of mental tissue, even though he may seem to be 'wasting' a great deal of his growing time, in the eyes of those for whom the only channels of learning are books and verbally communicated information.

Samuel Dash

I'm very much in support of the free press, but the free press ought to be educational and informative. And I believe they have fallen down recently on that.

Salma Hayek

If you give me any problem in America I can trace it down to domestic violence. It is the cradle of most of the problems, economic, psychological, educational.

Rudolf Steiner

It is important that we discover an educational method where people learn to learn and go on learning their whole lives

Walt Disney

Give the public everything you can give them, keep the place as clean as you can keep it, keep it friendly.

Vita Sackville-West

The more one gardens, the more one learns; And the more one learns, the more one realizes how little one knows.

Sargent Shriver

I don't think the Gallup Poll technique is going to be very helpful in determining the goals of our educational system.

Sargent Shriver

I do not think that the educational program of our schools should be determined by what the community thinks it needs.

Sarah Newton

THE BIGGEST TEST FOR PARENTS IS NOT HOW THEY PARENT, BUT HOW THEY RESPOND TO DISORDER AND UNPREDICTABILITY

Zhuangzi

My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it.

Wendell Johnson

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.

Wendell Berry

If we represent knowledge as a tree, we know that things that are divided are yet connected. We know that to observe the divisions and ignore the connections is to destroy the tree.

William Penn

Avoid flatterers, for they are thieves in disguise.

Thomas Peterffy

My charitable donations go to educational efforts, such as Teach for America, Vanderbilt University, Berkshire School.

Robert Ballard

The greatest discoveries all start with the question "Why?"

Robert Anton Wilson

People who've been through our educational system, they think they're thinking, when they're just repeating like parrots.

Tucker Max

Communication is not what we say, but what you hear (which is a lesson I wish our educational system understood)

But you take a four-year state college, with a broader range of admission, and what happens during those four years may be an even greater value-added educational experience. I don't know.

One of the things that we're all struggling with is how to judge the quality of the value-added experience of an educational course or year. I don't think it's impossible to do that, but it's difficult.