George Monbiot Quotes

If you can read, you can find books on anything you want. You can self-educate even if you can't afford to go to school.

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.

There are no national frontiers to learning.

The general intelligence of the people is far ahead of our people, and no wonder; every night there are lectures upon every subject the mind of man can contemplate—astronomy, geology, botany, natural history, conchology, water, smoke, continents, mountains, valleys, clouds, anatomy, physiology, lice, spiders, whiskey, eatables, shipping, trees and everything. Elder Geda and I heard a Roman Catholic Priest lecture on botany with masterly ability this evening, yet not a cent was charged at the door; all these lectures are free to the public. I have told our young ministers for years, to learn to lecture; that our race will never be anything till they do so I am now satisfied, as never before, that I was right. These lectures are attended, too, not by the finely attired only, but by the laboring people.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing

The introduction of many minds into many fields of learning along a broad spectrum keeps alive questions about the accessibility, if not the unity, of knowledge.

I have always liked the idea of going to print because a big part of what we are about is to disseminate knowledge throughout the world and not just to people who have broadband.

To break boundaries interests me. With all the knowledge that is available now in the world, it should be accessible to everyone. You can get so much information on the Internet now, and yet there are so many places in the world where people just don't have the education.

I spend so much time with the brightest and most talented and well-rounded people. I've had the privilege of having long and very intellectual conversations with people, and sometimes I just sit there and listen. It's like a better version of a class. Even though I'm not sitting at a desk and in school, I'm still learning all the time.

Give people knowledge and they really eat it up and they appreciate it a lot and the more that knowledge is made available to people, the more they will utilize it and let it be a part of them.

Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.

Take advantage of educating yourself.

As technology breaks down the physical barriers of college campuses, the extraordinary intellectual capital of the educator community is becoming available to anyone committed to learning - regardless of age, income or location.

As far as I can see, about the only thing I've missed is a college education.

In my opinion, right up there with free public schools, our free public library system is what makes citizenship possible, even what makes America great.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

Knowledge should be a public good, and I want my ideas to have as much exposure as possible.

My books are very few, but then the world is before me - a library open to all - from which poverty of purse cannot exclude me - in which the meanest and most paltry volume is sure to furnish something to amuse, if not to instruct and improve.

Centuries have elapsed since schools were first established.... Because learning was viewed as the exclusive province of the samurai and his superiors, farmers, artisans, merchants and women have neglected it altogether.... There shall, in the future, be no community with an illiterate family, nor a family with an illiterate person .... Hereafter ... every man shall, of his own accord, subordinate all other matters to the education of his children.

We will acquire knowledge and science wherever they are to be found and we will stuff them into the head of every individual in the country. No limits, no conditions can be attached to knowledge and science.

Give instruction unto those who cannot procure it for themselves.

The greatest interest at stake is not that of the copyright holders or the database companies, rather it is the interest a free and open society has in ensuring that everyone can learn the facts, regardless of their economic background. We should regard our nation’s involvement in the knowledge of its citizens … as the highest and most precious intellectual property we can ever protect.

We want a corps of educated instructors – we want gratuitous instruction in our academies and colleges. The di minorum of learning ought to be elevated in the scale of public estimation and intellectual endowment.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it .... For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?

YouTube has so much great content. And it really has something for everybody. And people come up to me all the time and talk to me about how YouTube has changed their life, how they've been able to learn something they didn't think they could learn.