Catherine the Great Quotes

I give priority to up-bringing over education because the ultimate goal of up-bringing is morals, and we have a more urgent need for morals than for knowledge.

True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature, or art, but in the development of character.

Morality is not only taught; it is caught.

It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge.

Morals are an acquirement -- like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis -- no man is born with them.

The formation of character in young people is educationally a different task from, and a prior task to, the discussion of the great, difficult, ethical controversies of the day. First things first. And planting the ideas of virtue, of good traits in the young, comes first. In the moral life, as in life itself, we take one step at a time. Every field has its complexities and controversies. And so does ethics. And every field has its basics. So too with values.

To exterminate our popular vices is a work of far more importance to the character and happiness of our citizens than any other improvements in our system of education.

Any system of education...which limits instruction to the arts and sciences and rejects the aids of religion in forming the characters of citizens, is essentially defective.

The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things — not merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely learned, but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.

People may talk about intellectual teaching, but what we principally want is the moral teaching.

Our moral faculties must be placed highest, else they can no more flourish than could a plant growing under the shade and drip of trees.

An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the one and eschew the other, is a misnomer

Mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people

If you're a teacher you have to teach the curriculum, all that stuff, you have to teach morals, you have to teach values, and you have to teach, all-importantly, self-control. Because a lot of kids don't have it.

No man is born wise; but wisdom and virtue require a tutor; though we can easily learn to be vicious without a master.

I was raised by my grandmother. She instilled everything into me. She taught me right from wrong from day one. I remembered everyday, being 4 or 5 years old, and walking to school, she would be like, Raise your right hand and stay on the right side of the street and make sure you do the right thing in school.

In truth, the care and expense of our fathers aims only at furnishing our heads with knowledge; of judgement and virtue, little news.

Of how much importance is it, that the utmost pains be taken by the public to have the principles of virtue early inculcated on the minds even of children, and the moral sense kept alive.

Every good teaching may still end up producing evil bandits who have no principles whatsoever, an outcome even more likely when the teacher is also a bandit.

Through the imparting of moral principles, good behaviour, and education we must make the Chandala come up to the level of the Brahmana.

The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil.

Education must be orientated towards the attainment of character for leading clean simple lives.

We do not so much want books for good people, as books which will make bad ones better.

The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice.