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There is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.
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“There is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.”

Booker T. Washington

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Source
Up from Slavery
Date
1901
Meaning

Meaning of “There is no education which one can get…”

Books matter, but lived contact with admirable people can teach standards, courage and conduct that abstract instruction alone may not communicate.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Up from Slavery, Chapter III, “The Struggle For An Education,” Project Gutenberg #2376. Washington describes General Samuel Chapman Armstrong’s influence at Hampton and argues that sustained contact with exemplary people can itself be a powerful form of education.

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BookEducation Quotes About Teaching & Intellectual FormationGrowthGrowth MindsetHumilityInspirational Quotes About Hope, Courage & PossibilityLeadershipLearning Quotes About Curiosity, Study & ExperienceLifeLife AdviceLife LessonsMindsetMotivation For LifePersonal GrowthReadingWisdom Quotes About Judgment & Living WellCharacterTeacher
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If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
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“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”

Francis Bacon · The Advancement of Learning · 1605
Meaning & context

Intellectual confidence can be improved by beginning with questions rather than pretending certainty too early.

Source details

The Advancement of Learning, First Book, Project Gutenberg #5500, transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition. Bacon contrasts impatience of doubt with mature suspension of judgment and then sets out two ways of contemplation before saying that beginning with certainties ends in doubts while beginning with doubts can end in certainties. It remains early-modern epistemological argument rather than a modern experimental rule for scientific method.

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it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.
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“it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · The Art of Literature · 1851
Meaning & context

Learning becomes knowledge, in this account, when material has been actively reconsidered and integrated rather than merely encountered or memorized.

Source details

The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The preceding sentence says a person must first learn something before turning it over in the mind.

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How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
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“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden · 1854
Meaning & context

Thoreau treats reading as potentially transformative: a book can mark a genuine before-and-after point when it gives language to questions a reader has struggled to express.

Source details

Walden, chapter “Reading,” in the discussion of books that can reveal new possibilities and answer enduring questions.

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a man may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered.
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“a man may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · The Art of Literature · 1851
Meaning & context

Accumulated information is distinguished from understanding: Schopenhauer values knowledge that has been actively compared, connected and reconsidered over a larger but unprocessed store.

Source details

The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The library analogy immediately precedes the sentence.

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Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart.
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“Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart.”

Mary Wollstonecraft · Thoughts on the Education of Daughters · 1787
Meaning & context

Good reading can develop both judgment and moral feeling, making intellectual enlargement and character formation parts of the same educational process.

Source details

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), “READING,” printed page 49, Project Gutenberg #67466. “Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart” appears in Wollstonecraft’s case for carefully chosen reading that joins intellectual cultivation with moral formation; the passage remains historical educational and conduct writing.

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