John Lancaster Spalding on Knowledge

"The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth."

"Thought from which no emotion springs is sterile. The knowledge that has no bearing on the conduct of life is vain."

"The test of the worth of a school is not the amount of knowledge it imparts, but the self-activity it calls forth."

"Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity."

"We do not find it hard to bear with ourselves, though we are full of faults. Why then may we not learn to be tolerant of others?"

"The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as possible."

"It is a large part of learning to know what one wants, and where it may be found in its most authentic form."

"We do not see rightly until we learn to eliminate what we expect or wish to see from what we really see."

"A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company."

"If we learn from those only, of whose lives and opinions we altogether approve, we shall have to turn from many of the highest and profoundest minds."

"He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more."

"Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs."

"They who truly know have had to unlearn hardly less than they have had to learn."

"To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all."

"They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn."

"We may avoid much disappointment and bitterness of soul by learning to understand how little necessary to our joy and peace are the things the multitude most desire and seek."

"There are few things it is more important to learn than how to live on little and be therewith content: for the less we need what is without, the more leisure have we to live within."

"The important thing is how we know, not what or how much."

"We truly know only what we have taught ourselves."

"How is it possible not to strive to know what the awakening minds of the young are eager to learn from us? It is little less than criminal that we should put them off with foolish speech or lies."

"They who think they know all, learn nothing."

"The highest strength is acquired not in overcoming the world, but in overcoming one’s self. Learn to be cruel to thyself, to withstand thy appetites, to bear thy sufferings, and thou shalt become free and able."

"To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create, outgrow, and re-create them."

"More inspiring and interesting teaching alone can make progress in education possible: for such teaching alone has power to produce greater self-activity, greater concentration of mind, greater desire to learn not only how to get a living, but how to live."

"A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection."

"O brave youth, how good for thee it were couldst thou be made to understand how infinitely precious are thy school years—years when thou hast leisure to grow, when new worlds break in upon thee, and thou fashionest thy being in the light of the ideals of truth and goodness and beauty! If now thou dost not fit thyself to become free and whole, thou shalt, when the doors of this fair mother-house of the mind, close behind thee, be driven into ways that lead to bondage, be compelled to do that which cripples and dwarfs; for the work whereby men gain a livelihood involves mental and moral mutilation, unless it be done in the spirit of religion and culture. Ah! well for thee, canst thou learn while yet there is time that it will profit thee nothing to become the possessor of millions, if the price thou payest is thy manhood."

"To view an object in the proper light we must stand away from it. The study of the classical literatures gives the aloofness which cultivates insight. In learning to live with peoples and civilizations that have long ceased to be alive, we gain a vantage point, acquire an enlargement and elevation of thought, which enable us to study with a more impartial and liberal mind the condition of the society around us."

"Conversation injures more than it benefits. Men talk to escape from themselves, from sheer dread of silence. Reflection makes them uncomfortable, and they find distraction in a noise of words. They seek not the company of those who might enlighten and improve them, but that of whoever can divert and amuse them. Thus the intercourse which ought to be a chief means of education, is for the most part, the occasion of mental and moral enfeeblement."