| Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own
tail. It won't fatten the dog. - Speech, 23 Nov. 1900 |
 AI image created by R. Kent Rasmussen |
 From LIFE magazine, August 29, 1907 |
It is noble to teach oneself, but still nobler to teach others--and less
trouble. The self taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not
know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers,
and besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people
into going and doing as he himself has done. |
I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre.
If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an
Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre,
but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may
recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some
time or other.
- "Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation"
|
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower
is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education. All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to
conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal
cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal.
That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him
to know that the bottom half of it is rotten. In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made
school boards. |
 From LIFE magazine, November 28, 1907 |
Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into gold.
- What is Man?
Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.
- Mark Twain's Notebook, 1898
Many public-school children seem to know only two dates--1492 and 4th of July;
and as a rule they don't know what happened on either occasion.
- "The Game" instruction sheet for Mark
Twain's Memory Builder
| I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. - This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain, but until the attribution can be verified, the quote should not be regarded as authentic. |
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