Some meditations on education and intelligence

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” — Aristotle

“Education enables you to express assent or dissent in graduated terms.” — William Cory

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” — Robert Frost

“To change an opinion without a mental process is the mark of the uneducated.” — Geoffrey Madan

“To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

“There is a danger in being persuaded before one understands.” — Thomas Wilson

It was well remarked by an intelligent old farmer, ‘I would rather be taxed for the education of the boy, than the ignorance of the man. For one or the other I am compelled to pay.’ — Southern Cultivator, January 1848

“A thing is a hole in a thing it is not.” — Carl Andre

And after all that...

“An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.” — Charles F. Kettering

(Quotes originally compiled by Futility Closet)