Lyndon B. Johnson

Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today’s youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million.

Most of all we need an education system which will create an educated mind. This is a mind not simply a repository of information and skills, but a mind that is a source of creative skepticism, characterized by a willingness to challenge old assumptions and to be challenged, a spaciousness of outlook, and convictions that are deeply held, but which new facts and new experiences can always modify. It means an educational system which does not simply equip the students to adjust to society, but which enables the student to challenge and to modify, and at times reject, if necessary, the received wisdom of his elders.

It is a truism that education is no longer a luxury. Education in this day and age is a necessity.

We believe, that is, you and I, that education is not an expense. We believe it is an investment.

Every child must be encouraged to get as much education as he has the ability to take. We want this not only for his sake — but for the future of our nation’s sake. Nothing matters more to the future of our country: not our military preparedness — for armed might is worthless if we lack the brainpower to build world peace; not our productive economy — for we cannot sustain growth without trained manpower; not our democratic system of government – for freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant.

Poverty has many roots, but the taproot is ignorance.

A man’s college and university degrees mean nothing to me until I see what he is able to do with them.

All the learnin’ my father paid for was a bit o’ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

You must unlearn what you have learned.

There was no word dyslexia when I was a kid. You were just dumb.

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where most folks, including my parents, didn’t have college degrees. But with a lot of hard work – and a lot of financial aid – I had the chance to attend Princeton and Harvard Law School, and that gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions.

An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.

Perhaps because my father never got a college degree himself, he continued to view people who had one with a respect that bordered on awe. In most cases they didn’t deserve it. My father could run circles around most academics and he would have done very well in college, if he’d been able to go.

Any man can learn anything he will, but no man can teach except to those who want to learn. Education is preeminently a matter of quality, not amount.

That man is best educated who knows the greatest number of things that are so, and who can do the greatest number of things to help and heal the world.

As a kid I had a hard time reading in school. I was the kid who would go one period a day to the class for kids with learning disabilities.

Do not neglect your life skills, which should include a healthy dose of financial education.

Empower yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise.

I would love to learn other languages, maybe French? My uncle speaks German so maybe also German? Chinese seems to be too difficult.