Yes, if you compare it to the schools in, say, "Nicholas Nickelby" or "Jane Eyre", you realize that it's not actually a universal value in 19th century England!

Following Google's Spotlight on Jane Jacobs today, I read up on her in a few places.

Got this from her Wikipedia entry:-

She studied at Columbia University's School of General Studies for two years, taking courses in geology, zoology, law, political science, and economics.[8] About the freedom to pursue study across her wide-ranging interests, she said:

For the first time I liked school and for the first time I made good marks. This was almost my undoing because after I had garnered, statistically, a certain number of credits I became the property of Barnard College at Columbia, and once I was the property of Barnard I had to take, it seemed, what Barnard wanted me to take, not what I wanted to learn. Fortunately my high-school marks had been so bad that Barnard decided I could not belong to it and I was therefore allowed to continue getting an education.[9]

^ Allen, Max (ed), ed. (1997-10-01). Ideas that Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs. Ginger Press. ISBN 0-921773-44-7.

Love that last sentence.

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth." - Muhammad Ali

"The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20, has wasted 30 years of his life." - Muhammad Ali

"It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; It's the pebble in your shoe." - Muhammad Ali

"It's not bragging if you can back it up." - Muhammad Ali

"Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are." - Muhammad Ali

"Don't count the days; Make the days count." - Muhammad Ali

"If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you." - Muhammad Ali

"Live every day as if it were your last because some day you are going to be right." - Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay) may be best known as a boxer, and remembered for his catchy rhymes, but he was also the 2005 Presidential Medal of Freedom award recipient.

"We seem to have forgotten that the expression "a liberal education" originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely, was considered worthy of slaves only. But taking a hint from the word, I would go a step further and say, that it is not the man of wealth and leisure simply, though devoted to art, or science, or literature, who, in a true sense, is liberally educated, but only the earnest and free man."

- Henry David Thoreau,
"The Last Days of John Brown"

“We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.” - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice


"Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic." — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow - (Dumbledore)

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - (Dumbledore)

"I have already proven to you, I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being – forgive me – rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger"
(Dumbledore)


and last but not least:
"What. An. Idiot." - Hermione Granger/Harrry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Not sure if these have already been mentioned...

"The answer was so simple, I was too smart to see it." --a quote from an episode of Adventure Time


"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid." --Albert Einstein

"What are you reading?" [said with actual interest] --every good teacher.

"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere."

- Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)
Holocaust Survivor
Nobel Peace Prize recipient, 1986
Author, possibly best known for Night

We had to read Night for school this past year. I was heartbroken to hear that the author died.

"Our elections are free - it's in the results where eventually we pay."

- Bill Stern, sportscaster
(1907-1971)

"Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility may rest assured that he seeks in vain."
-Hermann von Helmholtz

;-)