Last Updated on December 20, 2022
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” ~ Nelson Mandela
This is one of the most famous education quotes ever by one of the world’s (and unarguably Africa’s) most accomplished presidents.
But to understand why Nelson Mandela considered education as the most effective weapon for changing the world, it’s important to go back in time to when the quote was first said. This famous saying was uttered by the late South African president on July 16, 2003, as part of a moving speech commemorating the launch of Mindset Network, an initiative working towards improving education and health in South Africa. The speech came barely nine years after the country gained her independence.
Note that Nelson Mandela was right at the center of anti-apartheid agitation in South Africa. His quests for an equal nation actually saw him serve a record 27 years of unbroken incarceration. Therefore, it probably would have been convenient for Mandela to hype freedom over education in most of his post-incarceration speeches.
However, like most philosophers and scholars who came before and after him, Mandela reckoned that the rewards of freedom may be immense. But true emancipation of the mind comes through learning. That explains why there are thousands of profound quotes on the subject of education. And in this article, we present 205 powerful education quotes that will help rekindle your love for books.
Our list of education quotes covers the full spectrum. There are quotes that emphasize the importance of pursuing education even when it seems the least inspiring thing to do. That while learning can often seem difficult and boring, it’s ultimately rewarding.
We also explore quotes about the diverse nature of education. You’ll discover that learning isn’t just about reading, writing, or solving algebraic equations. It also entails gaining the requisite knowledge to better yourself and empower the world around you.
For instance, they don’t teach emotional intelligence in most schools. But learning about this trait can help you foster meaningful relationships with your spouse, friends, and even work colleagues.
Another exciting aspect of education you’ll learn from this amazing collection of quotes is regarding the continuous nature of the learning process. That it doesn’t matter whether you’ve achieved the highest level of academic success. Neither does it matter your age or social status.
There’s always more knowledge waiting to be accumulated by you. And unlike wealth and fame that can fade away with time, knowledge and wisdom last forever. Once you learn about a concept, it’s difficult to unlearn it or lose it to someone else. You can only forget it momentarily. But with constant practice, the knowledge learned can remain in your mind forever.
So, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a teacher trying to impress the value of education upon your students or a student looking for motivation to work harder in your studies.
Or perhaps you’re simply looking for a perfect quote on the importance of knowledge! We hope that you’ll find a suitable saying from this collection of education quotes that speak to your situation.
Quotes About Education
1. “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to close it again on something solid.”— G. K. Chesterton
2. “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” –Alexander Pope
3. “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.”— African Proverb
4. “Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.” –John Dewey
5. “Education is not the filling of a pot but the lighting of a fire.”— W.B. Yeats
6. “Wisdom is learning what to overlook.” – William James
7. Change is the end result of all true learning. – Leo Buscaglia
8. Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. – Malcolm X
9. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. – Benjamin Franklin
10. The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. – Aristotle
11. Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. – Anthony J. D’Angelo
12. Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. – John Dewey
13. Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family. – Kofi Annan
14. A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read. – Mark Twain
15. Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. – Edward Everett
16. They know enough who know how to learn. – Henry Adams
17. 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
18. Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back. – Chinese proverb
19. Nine-tenths of education is encouragement. – Anatole France
20. Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown. – Claude Bernard
21. “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ― Robert Frost
22. Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.- Abigail Adams
23. “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” ― Aristotle
24. It is as impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.- Agnes Repplierg
25. They cannot stop me. I will get my education if it is in the home, school, or anyplace. – Malala Yousafzai
26. I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. – Steven Wright
27. “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” ― Thomas Jefferson
28. Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.- Dr. W. Edwards Deming
29. Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.- John Holt
30. Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new. – Og Mandino
31. Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. – Nelson Mandela
32. “I agree that a love of reading is a great gift for a parent to pass on to his or her child.”– Ann Brashares
33. “Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” ― Walter Cronkite
34. “To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul.” ― Muriel Spark
35. “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” ― Victor Hugo
36. Education is the ability to meet life’s situations.- Dr. John G. Hibben
37. Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education. – John Hersey
38. “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain
39. “Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
40. “Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.“ – Marian Wright Edelman
41. “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
42. You are always a student, never a master. You have to keep moving forward. – Conrad Hall
43. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. – Sydney J. Harris
44. Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves. – Ernest Dimnet
45. “Every artist was at first an amateur.” – Ralph W. Emerson
46. “Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.” ― Mark Twain
47. All men by nature desire to know.- Aristotle
48. “Education must not simply teach work – it must teach Life.“ – W. E. B. Du Bois
49. “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” – Alexander the Great
50. “Wisdom…. comes not from age, but from education and learning.” ― Anton Chekhov
51. “Education is a continual process, it’s like a bicycle… If you don’t pedal you don’t go forward.” – George Weah
52. “Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.” – Chanakya
53. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ― William Butler Yeats
54. “A good education is a foundation for a better future.” – Elizabeth Warren
55. “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 (Read more Jane Austen quotes.)
56. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” ― Jim Rohn
57. “The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.” ― Michel Legrand
58. “By seeking and blundering we learn.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
59. “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
60. “Knowledge will bring you the opportunity to make a difference.”
― Claire Fagin
61. “When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.” ― John Taylor Gatto
62. “Only the educated are free.” ― Epictetus
63. “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
64. “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
65. “I think you learn more if you’re laughing at the same time.” ― Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
66. “I don’t want revenge on the Taliban, I want education for sons and daughters of the Taliban.” ― Malala Yousafzai
67. “Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.” ― Mark Twain
68. “It is personal. That’s what an education does. It makes the world personal.” ― Cormac McCarthy
69. “The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth” ― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus
70. “With guns you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism.” ― Malala Yousafzai
71. “All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind.” –Martin Fisher
72. “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”― Aristotle
73. “It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.” –Claude Bernard
74. “Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.”— Chinese Proverb
75. “Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.” –George Evans
76. “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”— Carl Rogers
77. “Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.” – Mark Twain
78. “You cannot open a book without learning something.” – Confucius
79. “We learn from failure, not from success!”― Bram Stoker
80. “The minute that you’re not learning I believe you’re dead.” – Jack Nicholson
81. “A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.”— Thomas Carruthers
82. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” –Socrates
83. “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”— Oliver Wendell Holmes
84. “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
85. “Let the improvement of yourself keep you so busy that you have no time to criticize others.”― Roy T. Bennett
86. “The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.” – Voltaire
87. “You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”― Douglas Adams
88. “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” – Leonardo da Vinci
89. “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” ― Isaac Asimov
90. “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”― Albert Einstein
91. “Education is the art of making man ethical.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
92. “Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.” – George Washington Carver
93. “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
94. “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” – Malcolm S. Forbes
95. “Education is helping the child realize his potentialities.” – Eric Fromm
96. “The progress of the world depends almost entirely upon education.” –
George Eastman
97. “Education is the transmission of civilization.” – Will Durant
98. “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
99. “Education is the mother of leadership.” – Wendell Willkie
100. “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
101. “Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.” – Plato
102. “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” – Herbert Spencer
103. “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
104. “Education should light a fire within us to improve us and help our world.” – Sarah Josepf
105. “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton
106. “Your library is your paradise.” – Desiderius Erasmus
107. “Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” – Will Durant
108. “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
109. “Education is the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.” – Ernest Dimnet
110. “The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you.” ― B.B. King
111. “You learn something every day if you pay attention.” – Ray LeBlond
112. “One learns by doing a thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.” – Sophocles
113. “All things good to know are difficult to learn.” – Greek proverb
114. “The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.” – Aristotle
115. “Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” – Confucius
116. “By education, I mean an all-round drawing of the best in child and man in body, mind and spirit.” – Mahatma Gandhi
117. “Education is learning what you didn’t know you didn’t know.” – George Boas
118. “Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.” – John Adams
119. “Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” – Leonardo da Vinci
120. “The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.” – William Burroughs
121. “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
122. “The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.” – Confucius
123. “Education is everything- education is your power, education is your way in life for whatever you want to do.” – Ciara
124. “The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.” – Diogenes of Sinope
125. “Education is one thing no one can take away from you.” – Elin Nordegren
126. “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.
127. “When girls are educated, their countries become stronger and more prosperous.” – Michelle Obama
128. “Men, in teaching others, learn themselves.” – Thomas Lodge
129. “We want the education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one’s own feet.” – Swami Vivekananda
130. “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
131. “A man’s mind, stretched by new ideas, may never return to its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
132. “The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.” – Alexandra K. Trenfor
133. “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” – Andy McIntyre
134. “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”-
Epictetus
135. “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
136. “The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know.” – William R. Inge
137. “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
138. “What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.” – Henry David Thoreau
139. “What we learn with pleasure we never forget.” – Alfred Mercier
140. “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
141. “I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” – Albert Einstein
142. “The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.” – Mary McLeod Bethune
143. “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” – Plutarch
144. “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
145. “Education is too important to be left solely to educators.” – Francis Keppel
146. “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” – Albert Einstein
147. “It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.” –
Rene Descartes
148. “Nothing is more powerful and liberating than knowledge.” – William H. Gray III
149. “Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.” – Aldous Huxley
150. “You teach best what you most need to learn.” – Richard Bach
151. “The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” – Malcolm Forbes
152. “If we want our children to value education, then we must show our appreciation for knowledge.” – Brad Sherman
153. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” –
Confucius
154. “The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves.” – Joseph Campbell
155. “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” – Margaret Mead
156. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” – C. S. Lewis
157. “I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.” – Lily Tomlin
158. “Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
159. “I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message.” – Steve Irwin
160. “I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.” – Eartha Kitt
161. “The Best way to predict your future is to create it.”— ABRAHAM LINCOLN
162. “I am still learning.” —Michelangelo
163. “Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
164. “A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers.” —Helen Keller
165. “The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.” – B.B.King
166. “Try to learn something about everything and everything about.” —Thomas Huxley
167. “Learning without thought is a labor lost, thought without learning is perilous.” – Confucius
168. “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”—Pablo Picasso
169. “Being a student is easy. Learning requires actual work.” —William Crawford
170. “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.”– Winston Churchill
171. “Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.” – Claus Moser
172. “Life is an open book test. Learning how to learn is your most valuable skill in the online world.” —Marc Cuban
173. “No matter how he may think himself accomplished, when he sets out to learn a new language, science or the bicycle, he has entered a new realm as truly as if he were a child newly born into the world.” – Frances Willard
174. “Take what you learn and make a difference with it.” —Tony Robbins
175. “Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.” – Euripides
176. “Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.” —Vernon Howard
177. “All of the top achievers I know are life-long learners. Looking for new skills, insights, and ideas. If they’re not learning, they’re not growing and not moving toward excellence.” – Denis Waitley
178. “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” –Stephen Hawking
179. “Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.” –George Carlin
180. “You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way.”– Marvin Minsky
181. “Despise school and remain a fool.” – German proverb
182. “The learned man knows that he is ignorant.” – Victor Hugo
183. “I’ve learned… that the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.” –
Andy Rooney
184. “We don’t stop going to school when we graduate.” – Carol Burnett
185. “You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.” – Henry Ford
186. “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” – Peter Drucker
187. “I am not a teacher, but an awakened.” – Robert Frost
188. “In the end, we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
189. “To teach well, we need not say all that we know, only what is useful for the pupil to hear.” – Anonymous
190. “Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” – Richard Feynman
191. “Men learn while they teach.” – Lucius A. Seneca
192. “That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.” – Doris Lessing
193. “He who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” – Anonymous
194. “The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.” – B.B. King
195. “When asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated, Aristotle answered, “As much as the living are to the dead.” –Diogenes Laertius
196. “Education without application is just entertainment.”— Tim Sanders
197. “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”— Voltaire
198. “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”
— Mark Twain
199. “You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.” –Lyndon B. Johnson
200. Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. – Albert Einstein
201. The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”– Dr. Seuss
202. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
203. “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” ― C.S. Lewis
204. “The learning process continues until the day you die.” – Kirk Douglas
205. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ― W.B. Yeats