Clarence Darrow Quotes

I really do believe that education, despite this massive potential in transforming human lives, has not received the kind of attention that people should have given to it.

Schools should take an active part in directing social change, and share in the construction of a new social order

History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another. It can also show you that there's been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it.

Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

The rise of man from the animal to the human level was prolonged by the necessity of rising from a state of barbarism and violence to one of order and peace.

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.

All are agreed, that the increase of learning and good morals are great blessings to society.

I believe we are put here to improve civilisation.

And I do believe that the way to change a society, to uplift people - not just their spirit, but to uplift their society and economic base - is through education.

Where Schools are not vigorously and Honourable Encouraged, whole Colonies will sink apace; into a Degenerate and Contemptible Condition, and at last become horribly Barbarous

No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

At the basis of all prosperity, for that as well as for every other part of the country, lies the improvement of the intellectual and moral condition of the people.

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops,—no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

We cannot, as a country, improve economically, socially, and culturally without quality education.

We gotta educate the kids. You've got to do your job as a citizen, but the same time, you have to also give the tools to the society to learn and create their habits so it's a seamless transition to become a better society.

What nutrition and reproduction are to physiological life, education is to social life.

There is, of course, no complete solution. But we can do something. The chief means open to us is education There is no excuse for letting another generation be as vastly ignorant, or as devoid of understanding and sympathy, as we are ourselves.

Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.

Man is certainly not creative, but his creativity should not be concerned with God. His creativity should be concerned with making a better world, a better society, better literature, better poetry, better paintings, better sculpture, better human beings.

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years?

The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.

Education is a slow-moving but powerful force. It may not be fast enough or strong enough to save us from catastrophe, but it is the strongest force available for that purpose and in its proper place, therefore, is not at the periphery, but at the center of international relations.

We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many.

At the desk where I sit, I have learned one great truth. The answer for all our national problems - the answer for all the problems of the world - come to a single word. That word is "education."