It is obvious to any observer that in every western country the increase of importance of public schools has been at least coincident with the relaxation of older family ties.

The activity of the immature human being is simply played upon to secure habits which are useful. He is trained like an animal rather than educated like a human being. His instincts remain attached to their original objects of pain or pleasure. But to get happiness or to avoid the pain of failure he has to act in a way agreeable to others.

most notable distinction between living and inanimate beings is that the former maintain themselves by renewal.

We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts.

As believers in democracy we have not only the right but the duty to question existing mechanisms of, say, suffrage and to inquire whether some functional organization would not serve to formulate and manifest public opinion better than the existing methods. It is not irrelevant to the point that a score of passages could be cited in which Jefferson refers to the American Government as an experiment.

Every society gets encumbered with what is trivial, with dead wood from the past, and with what is positively perverse.

Beings who are born not only unaware of, but quite indifferent to, the aims and habits of the social group have to be rendered cognizant of them and actively interested. Education, and education alone, spans the gap.