Bret Stephens Quotes

The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know.

A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.

The rare person is still interested in new advances when they are adults. There is possibly a correlation with intelligence. In any case, you have to be fairly bright to keep learning and changing attitudes as you get older.

He that knew all that learning ever writ, Knew only this - that he knew nothing yet.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.

I think that probably the most important thing about our education was that it taught us to question even those things we thought we knew. To say you've got to inquire, you've got to be testing your knowledge all the time in order to be more effective in what you're doing.

What are we promoting in society? Well-behaved automatons that spew back what they learned in a book. That's not science. You can get a parrot to do that.

One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.

I discovered how science is truly a universal language, one that forges new connections among individuals and opens the mind to ideas that go far beyond the classroom.

Class I to XII wasn't much help; I was always a mediocre student. But when I pursued higher education and studied economics with theatre or psychology with science fiction, I got a whole new world view.

I'm a huge believer in learning anything from multiple points of view.

The brainy class is made up of individuals who think for themselves and beyond formal education are continuous learners who tend to be self-taught.

Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that, by the time they leave school, every boy and girl should know how much they don’t know and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it

It is important that students bring a certain …, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

It is not good to settle into a set of opinions. It is a mistake to put forth effort and obtain some understanding and then stop at that…. Do not rely on following the degree of understanding that you have discovered, but simply think, "This is not enough.

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.

I want to show people it's not elitist to be a deep thinker.

Today, education does not give you the wisdom and the understanding; it only indoctrinates you to believe something. So the mind knows very less but accepts so many things; it may be science, it may be technology, it may be anything.

I never stop reading. I read everything, and I read every day. If you never read anything, be curious. Curiosity is the true foundation of education, reading things that we've factually already agreed on, and I love reading books. With that said, it's more important that you ask the question 'why.'

The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done-men who are creative, inventive, and discovers. The second goal of education is to form minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered.

Once you've decided that something's absolutely true, you've closed your mind on it, and a closed mind doesn't go anywhere. Question everything. That's what education's all about.

I have said that the modern man, and especially the modern American, however much 'know-how' he may have, has very little 'know-what'

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you’ll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you’ll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you’ll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.

The main aim of education should be to send children out into the world with a reasonably sized anthology in their heads so that, while seated on the lavatory, waiting in doctors' surgeries, on stationary trains or watching interviews with politicians, they may have something interesting to think about.