A lot of the strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own minds. I'm not saying that there aren't armies and police and various ways to punish deviants, but there isn't any way to punish a large number of deviants. It's too expensive to even try. So, the solution is to colonize the minds of children as they're growing up, so that they become their own police, and to report on others who are deviating.

Creative work and critical thought, which produces new knowledge, can't be conditioned; indeed, conditioning prevents these things from ever happening.

One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. One of the first things our schools do is destroy that distinction.

What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up.

Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive.

I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders.

The economy schoolchildren currently expect to live under and serve would not survive a generation of young people trained to think critically.