Quotations and Literature Forum

I like this "quotation" that is often used:

Education is not about filling a bucket/pail, it's [about] lighting a fire.

It is attributed to William Butler Yeats, but it is quite unlike his
poetry. I cannot find the quote in the online Yeats. Does anyone have a reference to the source of this quote? I have begun to hate all this "quotation" business with wrong attributions!

I cannot find the exzact orgin of the quote, where it was orginaly said or written but all my research tends to indicate that indeed it was quoted by Yeats

_________________
Every man carries a circle of hell around his head like a halo. Every man, every man has to go through hell to reach his paradise.
Robert De Niro, Cape Fear

It is definitely attributed to Yeats but I gave up trying to find a source for it.

"Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire" -- W.B. Yeats

Education is not filling a pail, but lighting a fire.
~ William Butler Yeats
http://www.quotemeonit.com/yeats.html

This line is not included in my books of quotations under the name of Yeats or anyone else. The internet is quick to seize upon a mistake and replicate it again and again. I like the comparison between the humdrum and the inspirational attitudes to education, but I share your doubts about its origin.

By education most have been misled. John Dryden

I can't leave this alone -

now I've found it attributed to Heraclitus:

"Education has nothing to do with filling a pail, rather it has everything to do with igniting a flame."

----Heraclitus

I wrote to the author of the paper that used the "quote" to ask him where he found it. He said it was from one of those "Inspiration-A-Day" calendars.

This at least would make some sort of sense, because Plutarch did write on education:

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited".

Of course, I can find lots of use of this quote, but no exact source for it. Any ideas?

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."
-- Albert Schweitzer
"Learning of many things does not teach intelligence."
-- Heraclitus, Fragments
Yes, I know from where I come!
Insatiable like the fire
Do I glow, consume myself.
Light is everything that I seize,
Ashes everything that I leave:
Fire am I without fail.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, "Ecce Homo" (See, What a Man)
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PhilFilm6.htm

Okay, this does sound like Plutarch, but *where* is it? I've just searched the on-line Plutarch at the Gutenberg Library and cannot find this. The "translation" is only on the Listening Institute home page and on material available there. Of course, Plutarch did write quite a bit, but I cannot find the exact reference.

the Plutarch quote is inexact and never correctly cited (at least that I could find).

"For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth."
Moralia, On Listening to Lectures 48C (LCL 1.256-259)

It took me awhile to locate this-

] [/quote]