Donald Barthelme Quotes

I did not enjoy Cambridge. But I shouldn't blame Cambridge alone. I wasn't ready for university or for the wrench of leaving home. It was a big cultural shock.

Following graduation from high school in 1948, I attended Harvard University where I became a physics major. Having grown up in a small town, I found Harvard to be an enormously enriching experience. Students in my class came from all walks of life and from a great variety of geographical locations.

All of life is a constant education.

Going to our school is an education in itself which is not to be confused with actually getting an education.

Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates.

I hate school at that time. Now, little did I know that actually if I had stayed in school I would've actually really liked college. I wasn't aware enough to know that the junior high I was suffering through would be school at its worst.

Your college education is a key moment in life.

I was educated once - it took me years to get over it.

The most important thing about education is appetite.

The way is in training.

I suppose that in no educational institution can one become an educated person.

You can finish school, and even make it easy - but you never finish your education, and it's seldom easy.

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.

What is a teacher? I'll tell you: it isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.

You learn to handle the big moments in life by practicing on the little ones.

It is a great thing to be at your age... You are at a very specific time of age ... an age where you can follow all your dreams. But also at an age when you can change-you can change your dreams, you can change paths. When you start something when you're young, you should not decide 'this is it, this is my way and I will go all the way.' You have the age where you can change. You get experience, and maybe dislike it and go another way. Your age is still an age of exploration.

Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge.

You will make a lousy anybody else, but you will be the best "you" in existence.

The first half of my life I went to school, the second half of my life I got an education.

Be aware that even before you have reached your ultimate professional destination, if you always strive for excellence, you can and should have a substantial impact on the world in which you live.

We need to look at learning as the product of educational self-organization. It’s not about making learning happen; it’s about letting it happen.

My act is very educational. I heard a man leaving the other night saying, 'Well that taught me a lesson.'

Education will not come of itself; it will never come unless you seek it; it will not come unless you take the first steps which lead to it; but, taking these steps, every man can acquire it.

Boredom is the specter that haunts children from kindergarten to graduation on every continent.

The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School.