The most accomplished in the Scripture are fools, unless they acknowledge that they have need of God for their schoolmaster all the days of their life.

The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only a page.

After God had carried us safe to New-England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for Gods worship, and setled the Civill Government: One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust.

It was huge to read the Proverbs of the day every morning, it was huge to read the Psalm of the day every morning and to get that in us and get us going before the day even started.

Proverbs may not improperly be called the philosophy of the common people.

A man knows things and when he stops knowing things he's like anybody else, and the thing is to get power before he stops knowing things.

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

I don't know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

A woman alone who could read and write was suspect. Words were magic. Books were not to be trusted. What men could not understand, they wished to burn.

There is a special grief felt by the children and grandchildren of those who were forbidden to read, forbidden to question or to know.

The little I knew about my own self wouldn't have filled a thimble!... But one thing I do thank her for, for teaching me to learn for myself, by reading and studying and writing a clear hand. And for keeping alive in me somehow the desire to know.