The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time - for we are bound by that - but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.
Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.
In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity - or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity - by being opinionated rather than by being learned.
I know too well that these arguments from probabilities are imposters, and unless great caution is observed in the use of them, they are apt to be deceptive.
The sole function of education...[is] to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's education, must serve that end exclusively.
Some authorities hold that the young ought not to lie at all. That, of course, is putting it rather stronger than necessary; still, while I cannot go quite so far as that, I do maintain, and I believe I am right, that the young ought to be temperate in the use of this great art until practice and experience shall give them that confidence, elegance and precision which alone can make the accomplishment graceful and profitable.