Education & learning quotes, explained

Shallow knowledge makes people overconfident; only deep study makes them humble and wise. Pope's advice is to learn deeply or not at all.

A teacher's influence passes from student to student and generation to generation, so no one can say where it ends.

Said by Mandela at the launch of an educational broadcasting project. For a man whose people had been denied decent schooling under apartheid, education was a form of liberation.

The popular summary of Socrates' wisdom: he was wiser than others only because he knew the limits of his knowledge. The exact phrase is a later compression of what Plato wrote.

Newton credits earlier scientists for making his discoveries possible. He borrowed the image of dwarfs on giants' shoulders from medieval scholars.

Einstein says knowledge is limited to what we already understand, while imagination reaches beyond it. He was describing how he made discoveries.

Someone who can do many things but none of them really well. Today it is often turned around to praise people with broad skills.

Education should not just pour facts into students but light their own desire to think and to find the truth.

The habits and values children learn early stay with them for life, so guide them well while they are young.