One must search diligently to find laudatory comments on education (other than those pious platitudes which are fodder for commencement speeches). It appears that most persons who have achieved fame and success in the world of ideas are cynical about formal education. These people are a select few, who often achieved success in spite of their education, or even without it. As has been said, the clever largely educate themselves, those less able aren't sufficiently clever or imaginative to benefit much from education.
Edward GibbonIn the productions of the mind, as in those of the soil, the gifts of nature are excelled by industry and skill . . .
Edward GibbonHistory is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
Edward GibbonFeeble and timid minds . . . consider the use of dilatory and ambiguous measures as the most admirable efforts of consummate prudence.
Edward GibbonIf we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life.
Edward Gibbon