Educational thoughts from John and Abigail Adams

I thought a couple of quotes from the Adams would be encouraging. After all, their son, John Quincy, was educated enough to serve as a diplomatic secretary to the Russian court of Catherine the Great by the time he was 14!

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.--Abigail Adams

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.--John Adams