Nicholas M. Butler Quotes

Essentially, social education is moral education, and moral education is preparation for citizenship... When Jefferson and others advocated public education, it was to prepare for citizenship in a new, constitutional, democratic society.

Widespread public access to knowledge, like public education, is one of the pillars of our democracy, a guarantee that we can maintain a well-informed citizenry.

The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrusts her most precious resource, her children; and asks that they be prepared... to face the rigors of individual participation in a democratic society.

Most people associate reading with laying on the beach. They don't see that it's crucial for a democracy!

Our forefathers realized the importance of education to a nation, and particularly the importance of an educated people in a democracy, but we seem to have forgotten what sacrifices they made to start a public school system in this country.

Education, then, as universally diffused as the elements of God, is the life-blood of our body politic. The intelligence of the people is the one great fact of our civilization and our prosperity, — it is the beating heart of our age and of our land. It is education alone which makes equality possible without anarchy, and liberty without license.

I was in the classroom four days after the inauguration, because I said to Joe when we got elected, 'Joe, I really want to continue to teach.' And he said, 'Absolutely. You should be doing what you love.' Politics - that's Joe's life, really, his love. But teaching is mine.

Public universities are the lifeblood of modern democracies.

The true purpose of education is to prepare young men and women for effective citizenship in a free form of government.

Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy.

I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be involved actively.

I see myself as an old man and an unqualified teacher to the nation. I think being a teacher is probably the most important thing you can be in politics.

I wanted to better inform the world.

I was a trial lawyer. At the same time, I was a teacher. I taught about the political and social content of film for American University. Then I left and became a teacher at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I taught about the political and social content of film, but I also taught a course in law for undergraduates.

It's not really the job of a public servant to inspire, but to get the job that the people demand done. The Democrats think that if they have hope and are inspired, things will get better, but they actually won't.

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.

At the end of the day, I want to be a teacher at a university, teaching film or acting.

We are in a democratic society. It's our job to question.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.

Running a school where the students all succeed, even if some students have to help others to make the grade, is good preparation for democracy.

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty.

President Reagan always gave the credit to the American people and American ideals. He treated his job as a valuable temporary loan from the American people, a loan that should be respected and returned with dutiful appreciation.

A constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue.