John F. Kennedy

The arts are at the center of a nation’s purpose and a test of civilization.

In our democracy every young person should have an equal opportunity to obtain a higher education, regardless of his station in life or financial means.

Let us not think of education only in terms of its costs, but rather in terms of the infinite potential of the human mind that can be realized through education. Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.

Student loans have been helpful to many. But they offer neither incentive nor assistance to those students who, by reason of family or other obligations, are unable or unwilling to go deeper into debt. … It is, moreover, only prudent economic and social policy for the public to share part of the costs of the long period of higher education for those whose development is essential to our national economic and social well-being. All of us share in the benefits – all should share in the costs.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the maximum development of every young American’s capacity. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

Empower yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise.

Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.

Every child must be encouraged to get as much education as he has the ability to take. We want this not only for his sake — but for the future of our nation’s sake. Nothing matters more to the future of our country: not our military preparedness — for armed might is worthless if we lack the brainpower to build world peace; not our productive economy — for we cannot sustain growth without trained manpower; not our democratic system of government – for freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant.

Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

The more you learn the more you realize how much you don’t know.

Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won’t come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.

Over the years, I have again and again asked fellow believers in a free society how they managed to escape the contagion of their collectivist intellectual environment. No name has been mentioned more often as the source of enlightenment than Friedrich Hayek’s.

It doesn’t hurt to get more education.

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.

No one will ever get anywhere in this world unless he becomes a teacher, one who can show others how to do things.

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

I would like to be a scholar in whatever I do, a scholar is never finished, he is always seeking and I am always seeking.

Very early it was noticed that I had a good memory; therefore I was insistently tormented with learning everything by heart.

Knowledge without education is but armed injustice.