Evan Esar

Character is what you have left when you’ve lost everything you can lose.

Let us not think of education only in terms of its costs, but rather in terms of the infinite potential of the human mind that can be realized through education. Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.

No task before our nation is more important than expanding and improving the educational opportunities of all our people. The concept that every American deserves the opportunity to attain the highest level of education of which he is capable is not new to this Administration – it is a traditional ideal of democracy. But it is time that we moved toward the fulfillment of this ideal with more vigor and less delay. For education is both the foundation and the unifying force of our democratic way of life – it is the mainspring of our economic and social progress – it is the highest expression of achievement in our society, ennobling and enriching human life. In short, it is at the same time the most profitable investment society can make and the richest reward it can offer.

Over the years, I have again and again asked fellow believers in a free society how they managed to escape the contagion of their collectivist intellectual environment. No name has been mentioned more often as the source of enlightenment than Friedrich Hayek’s.

To learn, you have to listen. To improve, you have to try.

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.

In addition to an education, kids were supposed to graduate with some basic values, self-discipline, and life skills. A little common sense wouldn’t hurt either. Our schools don’t teach that anymore, instead we’re more concerned about kids having self-esteem and feeling good about themselves than we are about preparing them for real life. The politically correct crowd has taken over our schools, and as a result we are failing our children.

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

What I’m learning is that there is so much to unlearn.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

I mean, look, teachers don’t do their job for the money, obviously, because we pay them ridiculously little amounts for what they put in. Most of them come out of their own pocket for materials and things to help the children and all that.

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I’ve dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half… I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop…. I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn’t do it for fifteen.

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

Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won’t come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.

Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends.