George Eliot

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

The reward of one’s duty is the power to fulfill another.

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

Many of my students don’t know that I’m second lady of the United States… because, you know, it’s a community college.

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

That experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you’re generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.

Economists report that a college education adds many thousands of dollars to a man’s lifetime income – which he then spends sending his son to college.

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.

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.

I call myself a teacher because they want me to call myself a teacher, but actually, what I’m doing is I’m studying.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the highest return.

A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.

A man’s college and university degrees mean nothing to me until I see what he is able to do with them.

Perhaps because my father never got a college degree himself, he continued to view people who had one with a respect that bordered on awe. In most cases they didn’t deserve it. My father could run circles around most academics and he would have done very well in college, if he’d been able to go.

Education – lifelong education for everyone – from toddlers to workers well advanced in their careers – is indeed an excellent investment for individuals and society as a whole.

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 is a truism that education is no longer a luxury. Education in this day and age is a necessity.

In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.