Mason Cooley Quotes

Looking back, I realize that nurturing curiosity and the instinct to seek solutions are perhaps the most important contributions education can make.

As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.

Only a well-rounded intellect, a spirit nourished in the eternal sources of intelligence and culture, of justice and wisdom, is a safeguard against both indifference and skepticism.

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.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

One of the things that characterizes good intellectual work is a certain self-importance.

My mother cared more about how you reasoned than about the conclusions you reached.

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible.

The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things.

I prefer my partner to have profound, deep intellect, a profound education, but where their education comes from is no preference of my own.

You always need to be curious and study.

My Grinnell education didn't prepare me directly for the work that I'm doing, but it did give me the tools that I needed to focus my curiosity.

A man who cannot think is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have acquired.

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.

The education is the answer to everything, really, and on so many different levels. The minutiae of life require analytical skills that you learn in being educated, an ability to navigate the very systems that constitute life. They all require some degree of education, and if you don't get it, you're at a real disadvantage.

Our understanding of the world around us is constantly being redefined and expanded, and so therefore, it is wiser to be passionate about seeking for truth than knowing it.

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.

I think with every book you realize you are partway through and there is something really elementary that you should have researched.

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

The business of a scientific school is the dissemination of useful knowledge, and this is a noble enterprise and indispensable withal; society can not exist unless it goes on.

My mom was really vigorous about making sure that we saw things and that we questioned things. Education was so important to both of my parents.

I love academics, theory and all that. I love and admire that and try to do as much reading as I can.

I'm not quite pompous enough to think of myself as an educator or a man capable of definitive refutation of falsehoods.

I don't know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.