Education is not so important as people think.

Taken at face value, the remark pushes back against the common assumption that formal schooling is the primary measure of a person’s worth or prospects. Read in a Bowen-like key, it can be heard as skepticism toward credentialism and the social prestige attached to “being educated,” especially in societies where class and cultural capital masquerade as merit. The line also implies that other forces—temperament, imagination, moral judgment, lived experience, or sheer circumstance—may shape a life more decisively than instruction. Its bluntness invites debate: it can be read either as a critique of overvaluing education, or as a warning that education alone cannot substitute for character and perception.