Henry Giroux Quotes

Since the 1970s, we have witnessed the forces of market fundamentalism strip education of its public values, critical content, and civic responsibilities as part of its broader goal of creating new subjects wedded to consumerism, risk-free relationships, and the destruction of the social state.

An educated people can be easily governed.

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.

More students have a better knowledge of pop culture than of the Constitution.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

We need to get back to reasoning and thinking things through. The future generation is being brought up in greed and without a true understanding of civics. There is no more emphasis on knowledge and time. As a society we need to process ideas and understand what certain principles are based upon.

Reading builds the educated and informed electorate so vital to our democracy.

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

We know Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as politicians, but they felt that science was something everyone should have a knowledge of.

Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw a light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

Among the foremost benefits of free government is that education of the intelligence and of the sentiments which is carried down to the very lowest ranks of the people when they are called to take a part in acts which directly affect the great interests of their country.

Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.

A competent knowledge of the laws of that society in which we live, is the proper accomplishment of every gentleman and scholar

The stock of materials by which any nation is rendered flourishing and prosperous are its industry, its knowledge or skill, its morals, its execution of justice, its courage, and the national union in directing these powers to one point and making them all center in the public benefit.

Public broadcasting makes our nation smarter, stronger and, yes, safer.

To me, education is not a commodity. It is a public good, essential to any society with a claim to being civilised.

Nothing will divide this nation more than ignorance, and nothing can bring us together better than an educated population.

I feel quite sure that what the American people lack is knowledge.

Reading is at the beginning of the social contract.

I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right; for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence.

Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.

The root of democracy is in mass education. This foundation becomes stronger, when the citizens of tomorrow, our children are also educated about the electoral process.

The business of education has lay[ed] the foundations for nurseries of wise and good men, to adapt our modes of teaching to the peculiar form of our government . . . . He must be taught to love his fellow creatures in every part of the world, but he must cherish with a more intense and peculiar affection the citizens of Pennsylvania and of the United States.