30 Education Quotes to Appreciate the Gift of Knowledge

Education unlocks your mind and expands your horizons. Knowledge helps you see the world in a whole different perspective -- it’s like stepping out of the darkness into the light.

Education is so much more than what we learn in school. It also consists of what our parents pass on to us, what we learn out of curiosity, what we learn from others and from our own life experiences.

When you want to know more about something, you invite truth and possibility into your life. You develop critical thinking and you become better at making your own decisions. When you educate yourself, you become independent and powerful. The facts that you know become tools that no one can take away from you.

The world we live in is a fascinating place, and the more we know about it, the better we become at living in it. We hope that the following education quotes will awaken you thirst for knowledge. Because regardless of your age, there’s still so much left to learn about.

Here are 30 education quotes to appreciate the gift of knowledge:

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. (more Martin Luther King Jr. quotes)

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

ARISTOTLE (more Aristotle quotes)

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

NELSON MANDELA (more Nelson Mandela quotes)

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

VICTOR HUGO

If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; AND if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.

CHINESE PROVERB

Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.

MALCOLM X (more Malcolm X quotes)

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn … and change.

CARL ROGERS

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

SYDNEY J. HARRIS

What sculpture is to a block of marble education is to the human soul.

JOSEPH ADDISON

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

ANDY MCINTYRE

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

ARISTOTLE

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Watch this Goalcast video if you need additional motivation:

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. 

ALBERT EINSTEIN (more Albert Einstein quotes)

Change is the end result of all true learning.

LEO BUSCAGLIA

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

JIM ROHN (more Jim Rohn quotes)

Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.

CHINESE PROVERB

The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

DR. SEUSS (more Dr. Seuss quotes)

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.

T.S. ELIOT

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.  

MAHATMA GANDHI (more Mahatma Gandhi quotes)

Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?

ERICH FROMM

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think -- rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.

BILL BEATTIE

Education makes a people easy to lead but difficult to drive: easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.

PETER BROUGHAM

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.

CHINESE PROVERB

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.

GEORGE SANTAYANA

A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers.

HELEN KELLER

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 (more Abraham Lincoln quotes)

The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.

B. B. KING

When you educate one person you can change a life, when you educate many you can change the world.

SHAI RESHEF

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

G.K. CHESTERTON

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

JAMES BALDWIN