Benjamin William Arnett Quotes

I would stand at the cradle of every colored boy and girl in the land and bid them to awake from their slumber, put on their clothes and shoes, prepare their toilet, eat an early breakfast, throw their satchel of books on their shoulders and hasten to the school house and remain until they have secured a parchment of graduation

I believe education is the great equalizer.

As long as a man lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the school.

He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty.

Always educate yourself.

Take advantage of educating yourself.

Education is very important, and I understand that.

It is lamentable, that many of our children go to school, from four until they are eight or ten, and sometimes fifteen years of age, and leave school knowing but a little more about the grammar of their language than a horse does about handling a musket--and not a few of them are really so ignorant, that they are unable to answer a person correctly, general questions in geography, and to hear them read, would only be to disgust a man who has a taste for reading; which, to do well as trifling as it may appear to some, (to the ignorant in particular) is a great part of learning. Some few of them, may make out to scribble tolerably well, over a half sheet of paper, which I believe has hitherto been a powerful obstacle in our way, to keep us from acquiring knowledge. An ignorant father, who knows no more than what nature has taught him, together with what little he acquires by the senses of hearing and seeing, finding his son able to write a neat hand, sets it down for granted that he has as good learning as any body; the young, ignorant gump, hearing his father or mother, who perhaps may be ten times more ignorant, in point of literature, than himself, extolling his learning, struts about, in the full assurance, that his attainments in literature are sufficient to take him through the world, when, in fact, he has scarcely any learning at all!!!!

This country demands that every race measure itself by the American standard. By it a race must rise or fall, succeed or fail…

I don’t care if he is black, blue or green. He is the best man for the job.

Education … is the great equalizer of all the other conditions of men.

You could not let your masters see you read; but now [after Emancipation] the colored people are fond of sending their children to school. Because the children in after years will be able to tell us ignorant ones how to do for ourselves.

When people are educated, class distinction disappears.

We once had a society stratified by bloodlines, in which the Protestant Establishment was in one class, immigrants were in another and African-Americans were in another. Now we live in a society stratified by education. In many ways this system is more fair, but as the information economy matures, we are learning it comes with its own brutal barriers to opportunity and ascent.

… the color of the skin is a condition entirely to be disregarded … I have little patience with … any other tests than those of regularity, character, manhood, and intelligence.

You always need to be curious and study.

Education is an admirable thing.

A book is quite a beautiful thing, even more so learning. Together, however, all they amount to is called book-learning.

I liked the education. I liked people learning things all around me and I liked going to people's classes.

If it is wisdom you're after, you're going to spend a lot of time on your ass reading.

I've always been a student, so I want to learn.

Seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.

To learn without thinking is labour in vain, to think without learning is desolation.

Read! Read all the time, the understanding will come by itself.

As precious as knowledge itself is the learning. As precious as any reward is the earning.