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What are books but folly, and what is an education but an arrant hypocrisy, and what is art but a curse when they touch not the heart and impel it not to action?

— Louis Sullivan Kindergarten Chats (1918)

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Notes from Wikiquote

This exact expression has not been located in available editions of this work, and might be simply a paraphrase of the above statement.

Variants

To teach is to touch the heart and impel it to action.

Topics

Education

More quotes by Louis Sullivan

Verily, there needs a gardener, and many gardens.

Kindergarten Chats (1918)

We must now heed the imperative voice of emotion.

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Truly we are face to face with great things.

Education (1902)

To teach is to touch the heart and impel it to action.

The true architectural art, that art toward which I would lead you, rests, not upon scholarship but upon human powers; and, therefore, it is to be tested, not by the fruits of scholarship, but by the touch-stone of humanity.

Kindergarten Chats (1918)

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The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

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Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Louis Sullivan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.