I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder that we could have tolerated anything so primitive.

True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.

One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.

Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

America's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.