“Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome.”

“Logic was, formerly, the art of drawing inferences; it has now become the art of abstaining from inferences, since it has appeared that the inferences we feel naturally inclined to make are hardly ever valid.”

“The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it”

“The primary obligation of educators is to assist in the realization of each student's full humanity.”

“So long as one remains in the same condition, the inclinations which result from habit and are the least natural to us can be kept; but as soon as the situation changes, habit ceases and the natural returns. Education is certainly only habit. Now are there not people who forget and lose their education? Others who keep it? Where does this difference come from? If the name nature were limited to habits conformable to nature, we would spare ourselves this garble!”

“Should you have liked your sister to have been noticed by a grocer's assistant for doing so?”"In the first place, as it is not many years since I myself was a draper's assistant, the mere circumstance of a grocer's assistant noticing any act does not alter the character of the act to me.”