Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Education

• Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Inspirational, Motivational, Friendship

  "My Country", Volume 2, No. 3, published by Litchfield Historical Society, p. 23, September 1968.

• By seeking and blundering we learn.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Mistake, Learning

• The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Truth, School

• I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Hate, Activity

• We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Knowledge, Doubt

  "Sprüche in Prosa". "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations", pp. 419-423, 1922.

• A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Education, Teacher

  "Torquato Tasso". Play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Act 1, Scene 2, 1790.

• Is it life, I ask, is it even prudence, To bore thyself and bore the students?

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Students, Prudence

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1872). “Faust: A Tragedy”, p.65

• What we do not understand we do not possess.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Wisdom, Learning

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2012). “The Goethe Treasury: Selected Prose and Poetry”, p.294, Courier Corporation

• They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Teaching, Useless

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann, Frédéric Jacob Soret (1850). “Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret”, p.129

• The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Love, Inspirational, Life

• In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Learning, Study

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.78, Ravenio Books

• If we take people only as they are, then we make them worse; if we treat them as if they were what they should be, then we bring them to where they can be brought.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, People, Should

• Aptitudes are assumed, they should become accomplishments. That is the purpose of all education.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Accomplishment, Purpose

• In all our academies we attempt far too much. ... In earlier times lectures were delivered upon chemistry and botany as branches of medicine, and the medical student learned enough of them. Now, however, chemistry and botany are become sciences of themselves, incapable of comprehension by a hasty survey, and each demanding the study of a whole life, yet we expect the medical student to understand them. He who is prudent, accordingly declines all distracting claims upon his time, and limits himself to a single branch and becomes expert in one thing.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Science, Medicine

• Alas! how much there is in education, and in our social institutions, to prepare us and our children for insanity.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Children, Insanity

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1842). “Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels”, p.78

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