John McDonnell Quotes

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

You don't need a city charter to know that education is the foundation of any community.

After bread, education is the first need of the people.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

Education is the cornerstone of our communities and our country.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

I give the children education.

Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities.

And I do believe that the way to change a society, to uplift people - not just their spirit, but to uplift their society and economic base - is through education.

Without education, you can’t have democracy.

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.

There is no excuse for letting another generation be as vastly ignorant, or as devoid of understanding … as we are ourselves.

Government is not just about maintaining the status quo. It's about helping people's lives to work.

At a collective level, learning is an essential link in our society.

Education to me is the most important thing that we've got going in this country. I mean, a lot of my family are teachers. I was the recipient of a great public education, and I see that's one of the first things that we're going to go, 'What are we going to raise?' The ignorant masses.

Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.

When I was younger, I was full of smart things to say about all my books.

I don't think anybody anywhere can talk about the future of their people or of an organization without talking about education. Whoever controls the education of our children controls our future.

Few things are as essential as education.

Today and always, there will be an obligation to pass on to the new generation the tradition of liberal scholarship - scientific or in the humanities - and to bring the understanding of things and human actions to everyone.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

Education is everything. It's for everyone. We all need to be educated.

We Americans have the great gifts of freedom and democracy, but it has been our education system that has fulfilled the promise of democracy.

Education remains the key to both economic and political empowerment.