Humor Education Quotes & Sayings

Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow the humor of its basic assumption about how it is possible to teach things to children ... — Shirley Jackson

What happened at the end of our last story is something called misdirection. It's what happens when you are led to believe that something is true, but in reality it's not true at all. Misdirection happens a lot in real life- especially in politics, history, education, medicine, marketing, science, religion, and the Oprah Winfrey Network. — Dav Pilkey

Despite all that education and experience can do, I retain a certain level of unsophistication that I cannot eradicate and that my friends find amusing. In fact, I think I sometimes detect conspiratorial plottings among my friends to protect me against my own lack of sophistication. I don't mind. I suspect that I am never quite as unsophisticated as they think I am, but I don't mind. — Isaac Asimov

It wasn't all that different from any particularly demanding boarding school, except that of course nobody ever went home for the holidays and we had a lot of brain surgery. — Kage Baker

Progress just means bad things happen faster. — Terry Pratchett

Eragon looked back at him, confused. "I don't understand."
"Of course you don't," said Brom impatiently. "That's why I'm teaching you and not the other way around. — Christopher Paolini

She described to us six lanes' worth of unadulterated fear, populated exclusively by motorists whose driving education had been paid for by the blood of pedestrians. — Jeff Deck

College is a different scene than it was ten years ago. It used to be all about sex and drugs. Now it's all about texting and fast food. — Aaron B. Powell

Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects. — Umberto Eco

The amount of educational programming on television today is simply desensitizing. The only reason left to go to school is to see gun violence. — Bauvard

Let me tell you something, I have never stated this, but you idiots refer to me as some moroon, I have a aster and a lwa degree. I simply cannot take the bar because of my stupid past in my 20's. You people do not want to go up against m on education because most of you will lose badly. — Larry Sinclair

Hey there, Hallie, welcome to the next place we need a Deer Crossing sign.'
I didn't know that deers could read.'
They can in Cosgrove County. It's part of the No Deer Left Behind program. — Laura Pedersen

Your mission statement says Galer Street is based on global "connectitude." (You people don't just think outside the box, you think outside the dictionary!) — Maria Semple

Try not to have a good time ... this is supposed to be educational. — Charles M. Schulz

And of course these days I feel like there is a nation of us - displaced southerners and children of the working class. We listen to Steve Earle, Mary J. Blige, and k.d. lang. We devour paperback novels and tell evil mean stories, value stubbornness above patience and a sense of humor more than a college education. We claim our heritage with a full appreciation of how often it has been disdained.
And let me promise you, you do not want to make us angry. — Dorothy Allison

That's the trouble with cookbooks. Like sex education and nuclear physics, they are founded on an illusion. They bespeak order, but they end in tears. — Anthony Lane

Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. "Leadership qualities" are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders. — John Holt

Not a Harvard-type education, ... Just a not-sticking-up-a-liquor-store-type education. — Chris Rock

Miss Wormwood: Calvin, your test was an absolute disgrace! It's obvious you haven't read any of the material. Our first president was not Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and you ought to be ashamed to have turned in such preposterous answers!
Calvin: I just don't test well. — Bill Watterson

Applied war is where the money's at. I don't mean that figuratively. Defense is 140% of the UVE budget. Offense is twice that. This is possible because there is no budget for math education. — Zach Weinersmith

A lecture has been well described as the process whereby the notes of the teacher become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either. — Mortimer J. Adler

Happy is the woman who can laugh at herself. She will never cease to be amused. — Charlene Vermeulen

Now, Woolf calls her fictional bastion of male privilege Oxbridge, so I'll call mine Yarvard. Even though she cannot attend Yarvard because she is a woman, Judith cheerfully applies for admission at, let's call it, Smithcliff, a prestigious women's college. She is denied admission on the grounds that
the dorms and classrooms can't
accommodate wheelchairs, that her speech pattern would interfere with her elocution lessons, and that her presence would upset the other students. There is also the suggestion that she is not good marriage material for the men at the elite college to which Smithcliff is a bride-supplying "sister school." The letter inquires as to why she hasn't been institutionalized.
When she goes to the administration building to protest the decision, she can't get up the flight of marble steps on the Greek Revival building. This edifice was designed to evoke a connection to the Classical world, which practiced infanticide of disabled newborns. — Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. — Pete Seeger

Pheromones didn't care about tomorrow. They didn't care about education or employment or age. — Tracy Brogan

When a child reaches puberty, parents become so curious about their sex lives and whereabouts, put them behind bars to their own detriment. When such a child breaks free, don't be surprised to see him/her in porn movies. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Thanks to my mother, I was raised to have a morbid imagination. When I was a child, she often talked about death as warning, as an unavoidable matter of fact. Little Debbie's mom down the block might say, 'Honey, look both ways before crossing the street.' My mother's version: 'You don't look, you get smash flat like sand dab.' (Sand dabs were the cheap fish we bought live in the market, distinguished in my mind by their two eyes affixed on one side of their woebegone cartoon faces.)
The warnings grew worse, depending on the danger at hand. Sex education, for example, consisted of the following advice: 'Don't ever let boy kiss you. You do, you can't stop. Then you have baby. You put baby in garbage can. Police find you, put you in jail, then you life over, better just kill youself. — Amy Tan

American grammar doesn't have the sturdiness of British grammar (a British advertising man with a proper education can make magazine copy for ribbed condoms sound like the Magna goddam Carta), but it has its own scruffy charm — Stephen King

Wylan drew himself up. "I may not have had your ... education, but I'm sure I know plenty of words that you don't."
"Also the proper way to fold a napkin and dance a minuet. Oh, and you can play the flute. Marketable skills, merchling. Marketable skills."
"No one dances the minuet any more," grumbled Wylan. — Leigh Bardugo

We followed the bondage Bobbsey Twins across the crowded dance floor. Those leather shorts were an adventure from behind, let me tell you.
And the pictures of Elvis decorating the walls were an education, too. It wasn't often you ran into a bondage/Elvis/ whorehouse-themed vampire
club. — Charlaine Harris

I like art with a sense of humor. I don't have a huge art education to understand everything. I don't think that means that art has to be watered down to the lowest common denominator, though. I don't think you have to go to college to be able appreciate great art, but I like art that doesn't take itself too seriously. — Kathleen Hanna

Yeah. Floyd is his batman."
His what?"
Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant."
You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don't make you money than anybody I know. — Robert B. Parker

Then you're aping him. Valentine was one of the most arrogant and disrespectful men I've ever met. I suppose he brought you up to be just like him."
"Yes," Jace said, unable to help himself, "I was trained to be an evil mastermind from a young age. Pulling the wings off flies, poisoning the earth's water supply - I was covering that stuff in kindergarten. I guess we're all just lucky my father faked his own death before he got to the raping and pillaging part of my education, or no one would be safe. — Cassandra Clare

Calvin: I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog! Want to see my book report?
Hobbes: (Reading Calvin's paper) "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender modes."
Calvin: Academia, here I come! — Bill Watterson

I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. — Mark Twain

I used my history degree about twice a year whether I needed to or not. — Patricia Briggs

When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him; and he was sent home like a well-threshed ear of corn, with nothing in his head. — Thomas Love Peacock

I would never believe it of you, my boy, regardless of the schemers your mother and sister turned out to be. You may not be the most clever boy, nor the most prudent, nor the most gentlemanlike, nor ... "
Edward cleared his throat.
"Right! But you have a good heart, and I have every hope that with the proper education and mentoring you will be credit to the family yet. — Julie Klassen

If the goal of conservatives is to discourage young people from having sex, they should change their strategy and push to make comprehensive sexual education compulsory. Our educational system has proved that if a subject is taught in a boring enough manner, Americans will make every effort to avoid it for the rest of their lives. If homosexuality was taught in the same manner as trigonometry, even most gay people would have no use for it after graduation. — Bob Smith

[Myrnin to Claire about their costumes of Pierrot and Harlequin, respectively]
"Don't they teach you anything in your schools?"
"Not about this."
"Pity. I suppose that's what comes of your main education flowing from Google. — Rachel Caine

Who said to kill does not require gentleness? — Nawal El Saadawi

I wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup? — Jerry Seinfeld

Night clubs are where Americans learn the laws of motion. — Bauvard

By the time a student gets to college, he's spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse resume to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he's ready--for nothing in particular. — Peter Thiel

My parents said they had to make a lot of sacrifices to pay for my education ... because they were both druids. — Milton Jones

Come forward as servants of Islam, organize the people economically, socially, educationally and politically and I am sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by everybody. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even, heaven help us, biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way into the postmodern world with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. — N. T. Wright

He was afflicted with an education and a sense of humor. He was inspired by a purpose. He was armed with a phone book. He was doomed. — Alfred Bester

Mathematics education is much more complicated than you expected, even though you expected it to be more complicated than you expected. — Edward Griffith Begle

I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic. — Kurt Vonnegut

George," said Fred, "I think we've outgrown full-time education."
"Yeah, I've been feeling that way myself," said George lightly. — J.K. Rowling

I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building. — Charles M. Schulz

Some men never recover from education. — Oliver St. John Gogarty

My profanity has a certain religious flavor that can only be learned through a lifetime of Catholic education. — Emma Chase

It turns out that we're not the only ones who go out on a scientific limb as we discuss or attempt to discuss cars, car repairs and scientific education in America today. — Tom Magliozzi

I mean
no offense, Leonard, but you really don't like to climb ropes, and get into the Marine Corps, and kill your countriy's enemies, do you?"
I said that it wasn't one of the big goals of my life.
"Well, maybe you'd like me to get you into this corrective gym class, where you can study toe dancing, and grow up to be a little Commie, sissy boy," Mr. Jerris said.
I told him I would like that just fine ... — Daniel Pinkwater

Jack Woodson is currently living and working in Dallas, TX. He has forty children, and all of them have different mothers. — John Pearson

Hey, Geekoid!" yelled Duncan Dougal, "Why do you read so much? Don't you know how to watch TV? — Bruce Coville

Derisively, Ronan said, 'No. The ancient Greeks didn't have a word for Blue.'
Everyone at the table looked at him.
'What the hell, Ronan?' said Adam.
'It's hard to imagine," Gansey mused, 'how this evidently successful classical education never seems to make it into your school papers.'
'They never ask the right questions,' Ronan replied. — Maggie Stiefvater

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards. — Mark Twain

I dislike the idea of a murderer employing children,' said Holmes darkly. 'It is, I agree, bad for their morals, and interferes with their sleep.' 'And their schooling,' added Holmes sententiously. — Laurie R. King

Punctuation was, it is sad to say, invented a very long time ago. Even more frustrating, it has remained with us ever since. — Anne Elizabeth Moore

Education is the best gift my parent gave me. — Lailah Gifty Akita

What a slacker. Just because daddy paid for his college education, he thinks he can avoid dying for his country."
Willie "Drafted — Rich Allan

College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night? — David Wood

I don't argue with fools; I educate. — Shannon L. Alder

What did Mira show your attacker last week? he asked, desperate to turn the attention away from himself now. Yakut shrugged. Only he can know. The girl has no knowledge of what her eyes reflect. Thank God for that. Niko hated to think of the education she might have just gotten otherwise. — Lara Adrian

British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it. If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps. — Peter Ustinov

The Germans have a wonderful combination of pathos, energy, and humor. They are like Californians with an education. — Joan Juliet Buck

As for the comparatively small class of violent crimes against persons, unconnected with any idea of gain, they were almost wholly confined, even in your day, to the ignorant and bestial; and in these days, when education and good manners are not the monopoly of a few, but universal, such atrocities are scarcely ever heard of. — Edward Bellamy

A word says more than a thousand images. Exercises for the visually inclined: illustrate "appreciation", "humor", "software", "education", "inalienable rights", "elegance", "fact". — Erik Naggum

You show up at these meetings to stay sober and you walk out with a fucking education. — Lawrence Block

As for my own truncated secondary education, my head was in the clouds as my mom would say, or if you asked my father, up my ass. — Michael J. Fox

Got it. You're fourteen. I'm proud you can count that high. It's a testament to the modern American education system. But I should probable point out that you're not the only one. I'm told you go to a school with a whole class of-get this-kids who are fourteen.- Ash — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me. — Flannery O'Connor

Education always continues. We all know that beauty fades, but what stays is a person's personality, their sense of humor, their wit, what they're interested in. That's what really shines. — Stephanie Seymour

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers
or should I say, nurses?
will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us. — C.S. Lewis

The students we saw were all bright, attractive, and polite, and the teachers all seemed to be smart and dedicated, and I began to appreciate the benefits of a private school education. If only I'd had the opportunity to attend a place like this, who knows what I might have become? Perhaps instead of a mere blood-spatter analyst who slunk away at night to kill without conscience, I could have become a doctor, or a physicist, or even a senator who slunk away at night to kill without conscience. It was terribly sad to think of all my wasted potential. — Jeff Lindsay

Mr. Klamp laid down the law. No tardiness, no talking above 40 decibels, no untied shoelaces, no visible undergarments, no eating, no chewing gum, no chewing tobacco, no chewing betel nuts, no chewing coca leaves, no chewing out students (unless Mr. Klamp was doing the chewing out), no chewing out teachers (unless ditto), no unnecessary displays of temper (unless ditto), no unnecessary displays of affection (no exceptions), no pets over one ounce or under one ton, and no singing, except in Bulgarian. I began to think Mr Klamp wouldn't be so bad ... — Polly Shulman

This column was an attempt to convey to British readers something of the flavor of high-school graduation, a ritual largely unknown across the Atlantic and one at odds with the basic organizing principle of English education: The continual assurances by commencement speakers that yours is the most awesome generation ever to walk the earth ring a little odd if you're a survivor of some grim Dotheboys Hall where the prevailing educational philosophy was to lower your self-esteem to undetectable levels by the end of the first week. — Mark Steyn

Of course, a culture as manically and massively materialistic as ours creates materialistic behavior in its people, especially in those people who've been subjected to nothing but the destruction of imagination that this culture calls education, the destruction of autonomy it calls work, and the destruction of activity it calls entertainment. — James Hillman

All that I've learned, I've forgotten. The little that I still know, I've guessed. — Nicolas Chamfort

If you can read this, thank a teacher. — Anonymous

Lack of education," old Mrs. Sharpe said thoughtfully, "is an extraordinary handicap when one is being offensive. They had no resources at all. — Josephine Tey

Education: learning to find your purpose. Upon finding your purpose: what did I learn? — Bauvard

To fit the individual to live and to function in the institutional life of his day. — Max Braithwaite

Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of being challenged, and for the sake of being expressive, to offer something to someone else, to learn what we are capable of. — Jason Mraz

I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time. — Mary Ann Shaffer

The wizards were civilized men of considerable education and culture. When faced with being inadvertently marooned on a desert island they understood immediately that the first thing to do was place the blame — Terry Pratchett

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education. — Tallulah Bankhead

I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a student's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a student humanized or de-humanized. — Haim Ginott

Catfish always drink alcoholic ether if begged, for every catfish enjoys heightened intoxication; gross indulgence can be calamitous, however; duly, garfish babysit for dirty catfish children, helping catfish babies get instructional education just because garfish get delight assisting infants' growth and famously inspire confidence in immature catfish, giving experience (and joy even); however, blowfish jeer insightful garfish, disparaging inappropriately, doing damage, even insulting benevolent, charming, jovial garfish, hurting and frustrating deeply; joy fades but hurt feelings bring just grief; inevitable irritation hastens feeling blue; however, jovial children declare happiness, blowfishes' evil causes dejection, blues; accordingly, always glorift jolly, friendly garfish! — John Green

Gym should be illegal. It's humiliating. — Laurie Halse Anderson

How as a young girl, Ismat Chugtai convinced her father to excuse her from learning how to cook, and give her instead the opportunity to go to school and get an education:

"Women cook food Ismat. When you go to your in-laws what will you feed them?" he asked gently after the crisis was explained to him.

"If my husband is poor, then we will make khichdi and eat it and if he is rich, we will hire a cook," I answered.

My father realised his daughter was a terror and that there wasn't a thing he could do about it. — Ismat Chughtai

Who will ever kiss this encyclopedia of a head? — Elizabeth Gilbert

I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me.'
What do you mean, babe? You a fine boy with a good education.'
Employers sense in me a denial of their values.' He rolled over onto his back. 'They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe. This was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library. — John Kennedy Toole

Just about a month from now I'm set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars. — Richard Halliburton

Hey, maybe instead of going to college, you should drop out and I could quit my job and we can form an all-girl band with Lane, you know, like Bananarama. We could call it Tangerinarama or Banana-fana-fo-fana-rama ... or something. — Daniel Palladino

Emma: You can demand that Pettibone retain my services, but you cannot make similar demands of the parents of the students. They will not entrust the education of their daughters to a woman who has removed her clothing for an artist, no matter how exalted that artist may be. Pettibone would become a school without students. No that avenue is closed to me now.
Nicholas: Women disrobe for men other than their husbands every day.
Emma: But they are not on exhibition in the Royal Academy.
Nicholas: what of extenuating circumstances?
Emma: You make no sense — Donna MacMeans

Since most parents are reluctant to talk about sex, schools have tried to fill the gap. In America, when we decide to ignore a subject, our favorite form of denial is to teach it incompetently. Familiarity without true understanding is not only the basis of our families but of our educational system as well. — Bob Smith