The education of souls is continued in successive worlds.

. . . . Some things I have said of which I am not altogether confident.  But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know –that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.

. . . . Great decisions have to be made in life, which, once made, are irrevocable, and dominate the man’s whole career and conduct afterwards.  The chief use of education is to prepare a man for these crises in his life so that he may decide rightly.

. . . . Souls cannot leave the body once for all and remain through all time in idleness.  [Each descent is] a necessary part of the Soul’s education or is a necessary cosmic service.

. . . . What is the meaning of the word “recollect?” . . . Are you now collecting or recollecting the impressions of childhood?  Some thought they had begun to re-collect, as well as collect . . .

The great task, . . . as Socrates envisioned the problem of gaining knowledge, is to remember the things that one has known in earlier lifetimes.  It seems clear in this connection that Socrates was interested primarily not in recalling the personal events of previous existences, but in recalling the underlying capacities of knowledge which had been accumulated in the course of its past lives by the person (or specifically by his “soul” as Socrates  conceived of the soul).

. . .Chuang-Tzu proclaims, “Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education . . . . Conscience is a karmic memory.”

[A true system of education] should produce the most vigorous and liberal mind, strictly trained in logical and accurate thought, and not in blind faith.  People should be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves.

Key to Theosophy

Once teach [people] that greatest of all laws, karma and reincarnation, and besides feeling in themselves the true dignity of human nature, they will turn from evil and eschew it as they would a physical danger.

Meditations on death are intended to help . . . confront the reality of . . . finitude in a concrete way and thereby gain an intense awareness of . . . eventual death, and with it a greater appreciation of life.