The progress of society is mainly the improvement ...

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself indeed, it seems to execute itself.

I am less disposed to think of a West Point education as requisite for this business than I was at first. Good sense and energy are the qualities required.

Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.

The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.