All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talent.
The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.
Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the maximum development of every young American's capacity. The human mind is our fundamental resource.
Student loans have been helpful to many. But they offer neither incentive nor assistance to those students who, by reason of family or other obligations, are unable or unwilling to go deeper into debt. ... It is, moreover, only prudent economic and social policy for the public to share part of the costs of the long period of higher education for those whose development is essential to our national economic and social well-being. All of us share in the benefits - all should share in the costs.
Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation. One person can make a difference and everyone should try.
Remember that our nation's first great leaders were also our first great scholars.
If the pursuit of learning is not defended by the educated citizen, it will not be defended at all. For there will always be those who scoff at intellectuals, who cry out against research, who seek to limit our educational system. Modern cynics and skeptics see no more reason for landing a man on the moon, which we shall do, than the cynics and skeptics of half a millennium ago saw for the discovery of this country. They see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing. “But the educated citizen knows how much more there is to know. He knows that “knowledge is power,” more so today than ever before. He knows that only an educated and informed people will be a free people, that the ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all, and that if we can, as Jefferson put it, “enlighten the people generally ... tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of day.” And, therefore, the educated citizen has a special obligation to encourage the pursuit of learning, to promote exploration of the unknown, to preserve the freedom of inquiry, to support the advancement of research, and to assist at every level of government the improvement of education for all Americans, from grade school to graduate school.
I want the United States to have the best educated citizens in the world. That's the way we maintain democracy; that's the way we keep our freedom; that's the way we meet our responsibilities - schools, colleges, well-trained teachers who are decently paid.
Our twin goals must be: a new standard of excellence in education--and the availability of such excellence to all who are willing and able to pursue it.
We cannot obtain more and better teachers -- and our children should have the best -- unless steps are taken to increase teachers' salaries. At present salary levels, the classroom cannot compete in financial rewards with other professional work that requires similar academic background.
We cannot continue to pay our college faculties and school teachers less for improving the minds of our children than we pay plumbers and steamfitters for improving our homes.
It is no exaggeration to say that the struggle in which we are now engaged may well be won or lost in the classrooms of America.
Arms and science alone will not save us. In our concern for the future of America we dare not neglect the education of its politicians.
Thomas Jefferson once said that if you expect a people to be ignorant and free you expect what never was and never will be.
We need to strengthen our Nation by investing in our youth: The future of any country which is dependent upon the will and wisdom of its citizens is damaged, and irreparably damaged, whenever any of its children is not educated to the full extent of his talent, from grade school through graduate school.
Increasing the quality and availability of education is vital to both our national security and our domestic well being. A free Nation can rise no higher than the standard of excellence set in its schools and colleges.
Education cannot easily or wisely be divided into separate parts. Each part is linked to the other.
The vast stretches of the unknown and unanswered and the unfinished still outstrip our colective comprehension.