P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Books are for adults; revolution is for the young.

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.

The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.

The young people I teach now know they are being sold down the river before we even start studying the trends and numbers. That's the toughest part of being a high school economics teacher... being a witness when our children realize that the greatest deficit of all is a deficit of leadership.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

I think food and education will help stem the poverty of the young people who are being drawn into terrorism every day.

In the course of her education she had gone through the history usually put into the hands of young people... now her ripened reason gave to her present study at least the advantage of novelty.

I was lucky enough to be fairly quick at understanding what was taught, but unlucky enough not to be really interested in it, so I always got my exams but never had the scholar's love of learning for its own sake.

To counter the avoidance of intellectual challenge and responsibility, we must reduce the domination of certainty in education.

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.

Learning lines is on my mind until I do know them. I'll read the paper or paint the house to keep from starting to memorize. I've never found an easy way.

Usually I'm the one asking somebody to do something because I don't know how to finish it. I'm like, 'Do this for me' because I'm just resistant to learning.

Learning is finding out what you already know.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

To know the rules of the game, you have to be educated.

Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction.

Education has not been marketed well to young people. We have not made it look fun to be smart. Today young people have been sidetracked by the marketing of music and movies and everything else, but education has no marketing strategy.

The more one reads, the more one sees that one has to read.

A city cannot survive if it does not educate its young.

Many more of our young people have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy and the other arts of peace. But liberty is not quite the same thing as opportunity; the fact that young people are free to develop their abilities and talents in constructive ways does not necessarily mean that they will do so, unless they get help and support from adults.

In acquiring knowledge there is no law that applies to the white boy that does not apply to the black boy. They all have to travel the same road to reach the same end….A man that desires to be wise must study, whether he be black or white.

Nothing is of greater importance than the right early instruction of youth.

It's been a while since I've studied: since high school. It's a lot of work, a lot of work.

I do think observing is important in learning.