Bill Maher Quotes

The primary difference that I have found between the system of education in India and other countries, particularly the U.S., is that they focus on problem solving and relating theories to reality around them. These two things are lacking in the education system in India.

America needs the best education system in the world. We have it in higher education. We do not have it in general education for all of our people - the K-12 education. Other nations are far, far outdoing the United States in that area. We still have the lead in research, but once again, other nations are pouring more into research also. We still have a lead, but to me it's just very, very important that we keep that lead in basic research.

You see it even in our educational systems, where the market model becomes central. It's a matter of just gaining a skill or gaining access to a job to live in some vanilla suburb, as opposed to becoming a critical citizen concerned with public interest and common good.

People are really excited by Obama abroad because he seems to be the first American presidential candidate who has ambition to go out of the country. In a sense, with the power of globalization, you are kind of electing the leader of the Western world to an extent.

As long as American liberals are going to keep announcing that they're embarrassed for their country, how about being embarrassed by our public schools or by our ridiculous trial lawyer culture that other countries find laughable?

The people I know who seem to make unusual efforts at rationality, are unusually honest, or, failing that, at least have unusually bad social skills.

We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans

When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation. For what do terms used without skill or meaning, which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote but a people listless, supine, and ripe for servitude?

No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually ... I know what we could make of it if people only thought we could dare look at ourselves.

All subjects are the same. I memorize notes for a test, spew it, ace it, then forget it. What makes this scary for the future of our country is that I'm in the tip-top percentile on every standardized test. I'm a model student with a very crappy attitude about learning.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

The value of making young people stupid, subject to an educational deficit has enormous currency in a society in which existing relations of power are normalized. Under such conditions, those who hold power accountable are reviewed as treasonous while critically engaged young people are denounced as un-American.

Mitt Romney is predicting that as president, he will create 12 million jobs in his first term. Well, President Obama says a Romney presidency would result in lost jobs. Yeah, his and Biden's.

It is obvious to any observer that in every western country the increase of importance of public schools has been at least coincident with the relaxation of older family ties.

What people most need now is to apply their conversion skills to those things that are essential for their survival. They need to convert facts into logic, free will into purpose, conscience into decision. They need to convert historical experience into a design for a sane world.

Why I've never been that fond of politics and only got into it recently kicking and screaming, because I don't think politicians are going to reverse the trajectory of this country. I think it's going to depend on the American people understanding what is fair and what makes their lives better.

Apollo wasn't just about sending people into space. It transformed so much of our economy. From our education system to so many of the things we use today, it was a vision that led to the total transformation of the planet.

If more people could read, write, and comprehend, we could be much closer to solving so many of the other problems our country faces today.

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

The economy schoolchildren currently expect to live under and serve would not survive a generation of young people trained to think critically.

Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is increasingly turning out people who have never heard enough conflicting arguments to develop the skills and discipline required to produce a coherent analysis, based on logic and evidence. The implications of having so many people so incapable of confronting opposing arguments with anything besides ad hominem responses reach far.

What is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton done to this country? That the most basic responsibility of an administration is to protect the safety and security of the American people.

I think the big challenge that we've got on education is making sure that from kindergarten or prekindergarten through your 14th or 15th year of school, or 16th year of school, or 20th year of school, that you are actually learning the kinds of skills that make you competitive and productive in a modern, technological economy.

Clinton's major problem, and the two aren't separable really because there is hope in the country, the hope - - optimism has slipped dramatically, make no mistake about every measurement shows that. But the hope is still there. Hope is with him. People want change. They see him as the best chance for change.

I actually haven't even found a curriculum in America that is really preparing people for this 21st century world.