Education Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

— Henry David Thoreau

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake.

— Henry David Thoreau

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

— Henry David Thoreau

The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?

— Henry David Thoreau

Education makes a straight ditch of a free meandering brook.

— Henry David Thoreau

With wisdom we shall learn liberality.

— Henry David Thoreau

I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.

— Henry David Thoreau

“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study.”

— Henry David Thoreau

I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It…

— Henry David Thoreau

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something…

— Henry David Thoreau

Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit.

— Henry David Thoreau

I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.

— Henry David Thoreau

On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom…

— Henry David Thoreau

Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.

— Henry David Thoreau

My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground…

— Henry David Thoreau

As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive…

— Henry David Thoreau

The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and…

— Henry David Thoreau

The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than…

— Henry David Thoreau

What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see whata work this…

— Henry David Thoreau

Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is…

— Henry David Thoreau

Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is…

— Henry David Thoreau

I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the…

— Henry David Thoreau

We saw one school-house in our walk, and listened to the sounds which issued from it; but it appeared like a place…

— Henry David Thoreau

I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game,…

— Henry David Thoreau

That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to…

— Henry David Thoreau

The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the…

— Henry David Thoreau

I realized a school doesn't need a School Committee or Trustees or Governors or lumber or approved textbooks. All a school needs…

— Henry David Thoreau

“It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men…

— Henry David Thoreau

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers…

— Henry David Thoreau

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but…

— Henry David Thoreau

We boast of our system of education, but why stop at schoolmasters and schoolhouses? We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is…

— Henry David Thoreau

“Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but…

— Henry David Thoreau

“Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?”

— Henry David Thoreau

Being a teacher is like being in jail; once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it.

— Henry David Thoreau

We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been…

— Henry David Thoreau

We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would…

— Henry David Thoreau

It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that…

— Henry David Thoreau

Woe be to the generation that lets any higher faculty in its midst go unemployed.

— Henry David Thoreau

I had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps of a lighthouse, which was more light, we think, than the…

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau