Favorite Educational Quotes

To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.

-- Stephen R. Covey, The 7 habits of Highly Effective People, 1989, p.98

The complexity of design work is often underestimated. Many people believe they know a good deal about design. What they do not realize is how much more they need to know to do design well, with distinction, refinement, and grace.

-- John Mc Clean, “20 Considerations That Help a Project Run Smoothly,” 2003

The most characteristic thing about mental life, over and beyond the fact that one apprehends the events of the world around one, is that one constantly goes beyond the information given.

-- Jerome Bruner, Beyond the Information Given, 1957, p.218

Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1881-1906

It would be impossible to over-estimate the educational importance of arriving at conceptions: that is, meanings that are general because applicable in a great variety of different instances in spite of their difference…They are known points of reference by which we get our bearings when we are plunged into the strange and unknown…Without this conceptualizing, nothing is gained that can be carried over to the better understanding of new experiences.

-- John Dewey, How We Think, 1933, p.153

Baking without an understanding of the ingredients and how they work is like baking blindfold[ed]… sometimes everything works. But when it doesn’t you have to guess at how to change it… It is this understanding which enables me to both creative and successful.

-- Rose Levy Berenbaum, The Cake Bible, 1988, p. 469

What differentiates revolutionary thinkers from non-revolutionary ones is almost never a greater knowledge of the facts. Darwin knew far less about the various species he collected on the Beagle voyage than did experts back in England who classified these organisms for him. Yet expert after expert missed the revolutionary significance of what Darwin had collected. Darwin, who knew less, somehow understood more.

-- Frank J. Sulloway, Born to Rebel, 1996, p. 20

Alice, speaking to Cheshire Cat:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.

“Then it doesn't matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

-- Lewis Caroll,  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

LAUNCE: What a block art thou, that thou canst not! My staff understands me.

SPEED: What thou sayest?

LAUNCE: Ay, and what I do too: look thee, I’ll but lean,

and my staff understands me.

SPEED: It stands under thee, indeed.

LAUNCE: Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one.

-- William Shakespear, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, c. 1593