Training is a good dog, a constant companion and an utterly loyal and devoted friend, and everyone should have one. Education is a nagging counselor. And, I am convinced, everyone does have one. It happens, however, that some nagging counselors have grown strong by a certain kind of nourishment. Others are weak and puny, even infantile, having never been nourished at all.

A mind can be overthrown by words; that's the point. What is happening to the brain of a person who uses the passive, who writes, 'Delay should not be allowed to take place' instead of 'Hurry'? The user of the passive verb doesn't want a universe in which responsible agents do their acts. You see? Bad language ultimately is IMMORAL.

Education, I am convinced, must be nothing more than this: The journey toward the limits of Reason, if any there be.

Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.

Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars.

An education that does not teach clear, coherent writing cannot provide our world with thoughtful adults; it gives us instead, at the best, clever children of all ages.

People who cannot put strings of sentences together in good order cannot think. An educational system that does not teach the technology of writing is preventing thought.