Purpose Quotes by John Taylor Gatto

If you live in a material universe where acquiring things is very important to you, then family is an absolute deterrent to maintaining that…

— John Taylor Gatto

We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time,…

— John Taylor Gatto

There isn't a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as there are fingerprints.

— John Taylor Gatto

The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of…

— John Taylor Gatto

“Any economy in which the most common tasks are the shuffling of paper, the punching of buttons, and the running of mouths isn’t an…

— John Taylor Gatto

This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have…

— John Taylor Gatto

Self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge.

— John Taylor Gatto

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some…

— John Taylor Gatto

You need experience, adventure, and explorations more than you need algebra!

— John Taylor Gatto

A lot of the strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own minds. I'm not saying that there aren't armies…

— John Taylor Gatto

Is there an idea more radical in the history of the human race than turning your children over to total strangers whom you know…

— John Taylor Gatto

School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I…

— John Taylor Gatto