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Learning
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“A scholar's heart is a dark well in which are buried many aborted feelings that rise to the surface as arguments.”
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“Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey's back.”
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“Example is better than precept.”
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“Now, there are two ways to approach a subject that frightens you and makes you feel stupid: you can embrace it with humility and an open mind, or you can ridicule it mercilessly.”
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“Remember that the secret of all learning is patience and that curiosity is not the same thing as a thirst for knowledge.”
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“The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!”
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“ Learning is always rebellion ... Every bit of new truth discovered is revolutionary to what was believed before.”
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“He did not arrive at this conclusion by the decent process of quiet, logical deduction, nor yet by the blinding flash of glorious intuition, but by the shoddy, untidy process halfway between the two by which one usually gets to know things.”
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“But let me say this about learning experiences: they're weird. Or put it this way: what you learn from a learning experience is generally something else.”
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“The first problem for all of us, men and woman, is not to learn, but to unlearn. We are filled with the popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up. Patriotism means obedience, age means wisdom, woman means submission, black means inferior: these are preconceptions imbedded so deeply in our thinking that we honestly may not know that they are there.”
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“... none of what I know is out of books. ... I prefer tactual learning. Touching, on the quick of the sore nail, of present, mobile life. To toy, to gnaw, to tear: at the living element of pain. Like at a living drumstick.”
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“Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.”
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“Everybody is now so busy teaching that nobody has any time to learn.”
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“I wonder what especial sanctity attaches itself to fifteen minutes. It is always the maximum and the minimum of time which will enable us to acquire languages, etiquette, personality, oratory ... One gathers that twelve minutes a day would be hopelessly inadequate, and twenty minutes a wasteful and ridiculous excess.”
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“To teach one's self is to be forced to learn twice.”
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“The intelligence can only be led by desire. For there to be desire, there must be pleasure and joy in the work. The intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy. The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade.”
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“... in my experience one thing you don't learn from is anything anyone set up to be a lesson; what you are to know you pick up as you go along.”
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“... most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know; it made them feel ignorant.”
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“A good deal of education consists in un-learning — the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve.”
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“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”
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“School was a worry to her. She was not glib or quick in a world where glibness and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn.”
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“Music lessons — or lessons in anything — can be dangerous to us, for the weekly guilt can become addictive. We can come to believe that we deserve scorn, and that we really can profit from being told repeatedly how to do it, from being given 'right' answers. Gradually we lose our child-like enthusiasm for music or tennis or roller-skating or tightrope walking and substitute an intense yearning to do it 'right' for the teacher.”
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“Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors.”
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“... the ability to learn is older — as it is also more widespread — than is the ability to teach.”
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“We are pledged to be blind / By a totality of mind / Which has said: we shall learn what we already believe, / Study what we like, / Behoove what we approve, / Read our own creed ...”
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“One can learn, at least. One can go on learning until the day one is cut off.”
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“... one learns best, and writes best, in a state of defiance.”
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“Learning stamps you with its moments. Childhood's learning is made up of moments. It isn't steady. It's a pulse.”
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“I was always my own teacher.”
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“Some people learn from books, some listen to the advice of others, some learn from mistakes. I fit into the last category. So sue me.”
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“How we learn is what we learn.”
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“What we learn most deeply is usually what we do not know we are learning at all. Years later, if we are lucky, we recognize the shape of what we have learned, its true anatomy.”
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“I've chosen now for all my joy / My life in study to employ. / With peace and chosen solitude, / A studious world makes my life good.”
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“I am my own University, I my own Professor.”
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“... Henrik was not made for climbing the tree of knowledge.”
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“If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.”
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“No man is your enemy, no man is your friend, every man is your teacher.”
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“... learning can be a bridge between doing and thinking. But then there is a danger that the person who uses learning as a bridge between doing and thinking may get stuck in learning and never get on to thinking ...”
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“... Miss Forsyth was the first to admit that she alone was blessed with a hole in her head through which all learning seeped out, like puffs of smoke.”
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“... that is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.”
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“... we will be victorious if we have not forgotten how to learn.”
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“The test of a student is not how much he knows, but how much he wants to know.”
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“Let no Body be afrighted, because so many things are to be learnt, when the learning of them will be so pleasant; how profitable I need not tell you.”
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“The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you're learning you're not old.”
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“... teaching meant for the hands enters most easily through the eyes.”
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“Never learn to do anything. If you don't learn you'll always find someone else to do it for you.”
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“There's more learning than is taught in books.”
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“When someone is taught the joy of learning, it becomes a life-long process that never stops, a process that creates a logical individual. That is the challenge and joy of teaching.”
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“Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.”
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“Only people who die very young learn all they really need to know in kindergarten.”
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“The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us ...”
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“I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.”
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“We always hate the school room where we learn hard lessons. But then we love it, because that's the school that taught us all we know, and gave us all the strength we have.”
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“Let them find out things for themselves. It is the only true wisdom, and nobody wants even cake thrust down his throat.”
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“There is hardly a more heart-thrilling pleasure enjoyed by mortals, than that which parents feel when seeing their child first being able to 'catch knowledge of objects.'”
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“The willingness to be wrong, to make mistakes and give up the attachment to being right, is one factor that accelerates learning.”
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“I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow.”
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“The students are used to being entertained. They are used to the idea that if they are just the slightest bit bored, they can flip the switch and turn the channel.”
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“I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time.”
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“If you can learn from hard knocks, you can also learn from soft touches.”
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“Be open to learning new lessons even if they contradict the lessons you learned yesterday.”
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“... love of learning is the most necessary passion ... in it lies our happiness. It's a sure remedy for what ails us, an unending source of pleasure.”
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“The most beautiful thing in the world is, precisely, the conjunction of learning and inspiration. Oh, the passion for research and the joy of discovery!”
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“Enlightenment is not a process of learning, it is a process of unlearning.”
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“The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned.”
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“There are four types of students: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer, and the sieve. The sponge, which soaks up everything; the funnel, which takes in at one end and lets out at the other; the strainer, which permits the wine to pass out and retains the lees; and the sieve, which separates the bran from the fine flour.”