I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.

For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods; for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.

Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely.

Music, not being made up of objects nor referring to objects, is intangible and ineffable; it can only be as it were inhaled by the spirit: the rest is silence.

Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.

no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.

Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for.