Henry Williamson Quotes

My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.

Education should prepare our minds to use its own powers of reason and conception rather than filling it with the accumulated misconceptions of the past.

I still believe that education is about provoking some kind of original, creative thought.

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

By playing games you can artificially speed up your learning curve to develop the right kind of thought processes.

Scientists and philosophers tend to treat knowledge, imagination and love as if they were all very separate parts of human nature. But when it comes to children, all three are deeply entwined. Children learn the truth by imagining all the ways the world could be, and testing those possibilities.

I think kids slowly begin to realize that what they're learning relates to other things they know. Then learning starts to get more and more exciting.

This is ridiculous, I mean, wholly ridiculous. It never did any child any harm to have something that was a tiny bit above them anyway, and I claim that anyone who can follow Doctor Who can follow absolutely anything.

You can only learn by opening yourself up to engage with different sources of information. How can you learn something if you never see it, read it, or hear it?

To counter the avoidance of intellectual challenge and responsibility, we must reduce the domination of certainty in education.

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.

What could be wiser and to give people who can think the leisure in which to do it.

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that's powerful.

Can watching video lessons or using interactive software make people smart? No. But I would argue that it can do something even better: create a context in which people can give free rein to their curiosity and natural love of learning so that they realize they're already smart.

By playing, you learn.

Any educated person recognizes that curiosity and creativity aren't just important; they are among the essential human activities.

My education has allowed me to be more open to ideas which I would not have been had I not been as educated.

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.

Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it's the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves.

The present practice is to impress one's own discoveries, opinions and principles on the child by constantly directing his actions. The last thing to be realised by the educator is that he really has before him an entirely new soul, a real self whose first and chief right is to think over the things with which he comes in contact.

Our understanding of the world around us is constantly being redefined and expanded, and so therefore, it is wiser to be passionate about seeking for truth than knowing it.

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.

I think it's so important to feed your brain you know. Sometimes you've just got to read.

I was reasonably interested in mathematics in school. Typically what happens is... when you start playing chess, it takes up a lot of your attention. But about 10 years ago, I found that the Internet is very good to start learning about a lot of subjects.