Rush D. Holt Jr. Quotes

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.

I discovered how science is truly a universal language, one that forges new connections among individuals and opens the mind to ideas that go far beyond the classroom.

Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw a light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

A competent knowledge of the laws of that society in which we live, is the proper accomplishment of every gentleman and scholar

… schools of liberty …. warehouses of disinterested patriotism

Only by ignorance is science threatened.

We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

I'm saying that there were many great naturalists before Darwin's time who were very pious people and who knew more about nature than most of us. These were great naturalists; people I would admire for their knowledge of natural science given the time.

As an undergraduate, I did maths and physics. That doesn't make me a scientist. So I try to read and understand and talk to scientists.

An educated people can be easily governed.

I had become increasingly concerned in recent years about the lack of civics education in our nation's schools. In recent years, the schools have stopped teaching it. And it's unfortunate.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

I believe that everyone should participate in democracy and enjoy doing it.

When you Google me, you'll find a lot of people don't like Richard Dreyfuss. Because I'm cocky and I present a cocky attitude. But no one has ever disagreed with the notion I represent, that we need more civic education. So far there's 100 percent support for that.

I can remember picking up weighty tomes on the history of science and the history of philosophy and reading those when I was small.

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission.

Without an educated populace, democracy cannot sustain itself.

I am interested in 18th century natural philosophy, science, particularly botany, the study of hybridity in plants and animals, which, of course, then allows me to consider the hybridity of language.

I don't think academic writing ever was wonderful. However, science used to be much less specialized.

I begin to feel like I was in the last generation of Americans who took a civics class.

If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.

Most scientific revelations happened after the pursuit of knowledge quit being secret and hermetic.