Flashman on toast

“ ‘It’s an English school for you, my son,’ he told me. ‘Hellish places, by all accounts, rations a Siberian moujik wouldn’t touch, and less civilised behaviour than you’d meet in the Congo, but I’m told there’s no education like it − a lifetime’s trainin’ in knavery packed into six years. No wonder they rule half the world. Why, if I’d been to Eton or Harrow, I’d have had Flashman on toast!’ ”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.77, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, school.

Survive and prosper

      There’s no question that a public school education is an advantage. it may not make you a scholar or a gentleman or a Christian, but it does teach you to survive and prosper—and one other invaluable thing: style.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.148, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Education and evil-doing

‘Well, now,’ says Lincoln, ‘why not? Some of the greatest villains in history have been educated men. Without that education they might have been honest citizens. a few years at college won’t make a bad man virtuous; it will merely put the polish on his wickedness.’
….’Why at this rate, you will equate learning with evil-doing,’ cries someone. ‘What must your view be of our leading justices and politicians? Are they not virtuous men?’
   ‘Oh, virtuous enough,’ says Lincoln. ‘But what they would be like if they had been educated is another matter.’

Flash For Freedom!, p.127, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Abraham Lincoln.