163 Quotes by John Taylor Gatto

I urge you to examine in your own mind the assumptions which must lay behind using the police power to insist that once-sovereign spirits have no choice but to submit to being schooled by strangers.

Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us.

Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic-it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge.

Waiting your turn is often the worst way to get what you want.

Wage-slaves, free in name only, are much cheaper to exploit, and work harder than slaves.

Is it possible that those who sit atop the social bell curve represent the worst of evolution’s products, not its best? Have the fools among us who just don’t get it risen up and taken command?

All training except the most basic either secures or disestablishes things as they are.

Schools create the problems they seem to exist to solve.