Plato Quotes

There’s more time spent on teaching kids about recycling than on character development in the American schools.

The teacher who would be true to his mission and accomplish the most good, must give prominence to moral as well as intellectual instruction.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.

In 'Reclaiming Virtue,' I argue that we have had an element missing in moral education. That element is 'affect.' Affect is simply the technical word for feeling or emotion.

Education is the art of making man ethical.

Although children are good and well born, vice will blight them if they are not well educated.

Although it may be true that the notion of teaching virtues such as honesty or integrity arouses little controversy, it is also true that vague consensus on the goodness of these virtues conceals a great deal of actual disagreement over their definitions.

Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by actions.

Character grows in the soil of experience with the fertilization of example, the moisture of ambition, and the sunshine of satisfaction. Character cannot be purchased, bargained for, inherited, rented or imported from afar. It must be home-grown. Purely intellectual development without commensurate internal character development makes as much sense as putting a high-powered sports car in the hands of a teenager who is high on drugs. Yet all too often in the academic world, that's exactly what we do by not focusing on the character development of young people.

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.

Education to perfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, of human greatness.

As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.

I ask the educational system, the parents, the church, and pillars of the community to help shape a new culture of honesty, patriotism, respect, discipline and service for young Filipinos.

We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens.

Intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.

If you want young people to take right and wrong seriously, you must put them in the presence of people who take right and wrong seriously.

Children will be kept in much better order, be better provided for, and from infancy be inured to work, which is of no small consequence to the making of them sober and industrious all their lives after.

Everything we do as teachers has moral overtones.

Break not the will of the young, but guide it to right ends.

Your papers are marked when you go to school, but you can't mark the character.

Erudition - that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic - is taught in the schools; but where is the more important quality, character, taught? Nowhere in particular. There is no authorized training for children in character.

At our house we have come to conclude that building and strengthening character will require extreme measures and the intentional pursuit of gritty work experiences.