Waters: "My father was a schoolteacher before the war. He taught physical education and religious instruction, strangely enough." -- Penthouse magazine, September 1988

Gilmour: "Pete Seeger's a wonderful, fantastic human being. 'America's Tuning Fork', they called him at one time. I learned guitar off his Pete Seeger Teaches Guitar record. That was the first instruction I had. The first track taught you how to tune the guitar. That was pretty important." -- Guitar World magazine, February 1993

Tim Renwick: "I go way back with the band. I actually went to school with Roger Waters and Syd Barrett. They were four years older than me, but I remember them quite clearly. Yes, they were very cool. Roger made history by refusing to join the cadet force--he was a bit of a rebel." -- Guitar World magazine, September 1994

interviewer: Do you believe that most people would be better off without a formal education--the way formal education is today?
Waters: "As far as England is concerned, no I don't think they would be better off without it. I mean you can't just take away what's there and leave a vacuum. Most kids haven't been provided with the necessary tools to educate themselves. You've got to help children to learn. I agree with you that most children will be willing to learn if you help them to." -- interview with Jim Ladd, 1980

Waters: "I feel quite strongly about education. I went to school in Cambridge, one of those grammar schools that Thatcher is going to bring back, where I was considered without question to be a complete twat at almost everything, particularly English. And the Art teacher was so ineffectual that he was practically not there at all. Most of the teachers were absolute swines, and the school was only concerned with University entrance, particularly Oxbridge. It was a real battery farm. I hated it. All they would do was look at your most obvious aptitude and cram you into that pigeon-hole. I found Physics and things like that quite easy to cope with and so I was pushed down that road. When I left school I was all set to go to Manchester University to do Mechanical Engineering. But suddenly the thought of another three years of the sixth form was more than I could stand. So I took a year off. My career choice was made by the National Institute of Industrial Psychology where I took a whole bunch of aptitude tests--so I was completely passive about that as well. They told me I would do well at Architecture, which didn't sound as dull as Mechanical Engineering. So I said OK." -- interview with Chris Salewicz, June 1987

Barrett (on the other Floyds): "Their choice of material was always very much to do with what they were thinking as architecture students. Rather unexciting people, I would've thought, primarily. I mean, anybody walking into an art school like that would've been tricked--maybe they were working their entry into an art school." -- Melody Maker, March 27, 1971

Wright (on Waters): "We never really got on from the beginning, even in architecture school, though we respected each other--and I respect him still." -- Q magazine, November 1994

Waters: "I started studying Architecture but they slung me out after two years for refusing to attend History of Architecture lectures. I was very bolshie. I must have been horrible to teach. But the History lecture that I came up against was very reactionary, so it was a fair battle. I said I wouldn't do exams because the guy refused to talk to me. He'd tell us to sit down and copy a drawing off a blackboard. And I asked him if he could explain why, because I couldn't see the point in copying something off a blackboard that he was copying off a textbook. It was just like school. I couldn't handle it. I'd hoped I'd escaped all that. When you go to university, you expect to be treated like little grown-ups." -- interview with Chris Salewicz, June 1987

Waters (on "The Happiest Days of Our Lives"): "My school life was very like that. Oh, it was awful, it was really terrible. When I hear people whining on now about bringing back Grammar schools it really makes me quite ill to listen to it. Because I went to a boys Grammar school and although... I want to make it plain that some of the men who taught... were very nice guys. It's not meant to be a blanket condemnation of teachers everywhere, but the bad ones can really do people in--and there were some at my school who were just incredibly bad and treated the children so badly, just putting them down, putting them down, you know, all the time. Never encouraging them to do things, not really trying to interest them in anything, just trying to keep them quiet and still, and crush them into the right shape, so that they would go to university and 'do well'." -- Tommy Vance Radio One interview, 1979

Waters: "Obviously not all teachers are what we have to fear. The school I was at--they were really like that. They were so fucked up that was they had to offer--was their own bitterness and cynicism. Some of them, I may say, were very nice guys and understood what was going on." -- interview with Jim Ladd, 1980

Waters: "The teacher was based vaguely on a teacher I'd known myself." -- Mojo magazine, December 1999

Waters: "We actually, at the school I was at, had one guy who I would fantasize that his wife beat him. Certainly she treated him like shit and he was a really crushed person and he handed as much of that pain onto us as he could and he did quite a good job of it. And it's funny how those guys, when you get those guys at school, is they will always pick on the weakest kid as well. So the same kids who are susceptible to bullying by other kids are also susceptible to bullying by teachers as well. It's like smelling blood. They hang in on fear and start hacking away--particularly with the younger children."
interviewer: Would he do this in a physical way or mental torment?
Waters: "Mentally. Sarcasm. Sarcastic bastard." -- interview with Jim Ladd, 1980

Bob Ezrin: "So while we were in America, we sent Nick Griffiths to a school near to the Floyd studios [in Islington]. I said, I want Cockney, I want posh, fill 'em up"--and I put them on the song. I called Roger into the room, and when the kids came in on the second verse there was a total softening of his face and you just knew that he knew it was going to be an important record." -- Mojo magazine, December 1999

interviewer:Do you read much philosophy or psychology?
Waters: "No. I'm quite interested in those areas but I was put off books early on, and I find it very difficult to read. As a child I never got into the habit of reading. I went through a period when I was a teenager of reading people like James Joyce, because it was hip to do so. Then I got a very basic grounding of what there was in literature that might be enjoyable. But now, if I'm sitting on the beach I'd rather be reading A Ship Must Die or something of the nature. I'm very fond of those very involved English Second World War naval stories in the Hornblower tradition." -- interview with Chris Salewicz, June 1987

Waters: "But music is only mathematics anyway. It is another way of interpreting maths. Musical intervals are also mathematical intervals. If you double the frequency of a note it rises by an octave. We call it music, but our brain is going, Oh, that's twice as fast as that! But let me say that I never saw any music in maths. It was all complete drudgery to me. I was completely uninterested in it. I could never see the beauty of mathematical relationships." -- interview with Chris Salewicz, June 1987

Gilmour: "It's never too late to start learning something new. My boy Charlie was learning saxophone at school, and I always had a desire to learn as well. I asked his music teacher if he would give me private lessons at home, and he said, sure. So we started learning together and we went up through the grades together." -- Chicago Tribune, March 31, 2006

Mason: "What's remarkable is the amount of time you spend talking about the people you're touring with, rather than about, say, politics, art, cars, music or whatever. Your frame of reference becomes tiny. It's very like being back at school." -- Q magazine, November 1994