“Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?”

“I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught. ”

“To say that an idea is fashionable is to say, I think, that it has been adulterated to a point where it is hardly an idea at all.”

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

“Experience has taught me that people only give values to things if they have, at some point, been uncertain as to whether or not they will get it”

“To be taught to write or to speak — but what is the use of speaking if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think — nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true. ”