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The full quote is allegedly "The purpose of education is to free the student from the tyranny of the present." ...I picked it up in Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, but he didn't cite which work it came from. Goodreads attributes it to "Selected Works".

The Roman version of "trust me bro"

I dodn't think it's a quote; more a paraphrase of: https://www.loebclassics.com/view/marcus_tullius_cicero-orat...

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

That’s a very … liberal interpretation.

I find it fascinating how many interesting quotes turn out to be fabrications of unknown origin.

I suspect what happened here (and possibly in other similar cases) is that some author glossed a body of work in a way that made sense in context, and others mistook it as a quotation. It's as if I remarked that Isaac Asimov said a lot of prescient things about robots, and people saw that and started quoting it:

> A lot of prescient things about robots.

> -- Issac Asimov

I thought Mark Twain said that. /ducks