Gene Wolfe: Quotes about learning

Gene Wolfe was American science fiction and fantasy writer. Explore interesting quotes on learning.
Gene Wolfe: 204   quotes 4   likes

“Imagine a man who stands before a mirror; a stone strikes it, and it falls to ruin all in an instant. And the man learns that he is himself, and not the mirrored man he had believed himself to be.”

Gene Wolfe book The Urth of the New Sun

Source: The Urth of the New Sun

Imagination , Learning

“What little I have learned in the course of a long life, regarding the gods, I have tried to forget.”

Gene Wolfe

Volume 3, Ch. 4
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

Life , God , Learning , Forgetting

“Most Christians know next to nothing about the life and teachings of Christ and are afraid to learn, sensing that the knowledge will upset their preconceptions.”

Gene Wolfe

"Sun of Helioscope", in Castle of the Otter (1982), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Life , Knowledge , Sense , Learning

“You have need of learning, children, in order that the whorl will someday have need of you.”

Gene Wolfe

Volume 1, Ch. 2
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

Children , Learning

“There is more to be learned from any good teacher than the subject taught.”

Gene Wolfe

Volume 2, Ch. 1
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

Learning , Teachers

“This, then, is the new illiteracy, the illiteracy of those who can read but don't. […] This new illiteracy is more pernicious than the old, because unlike the old illiteracy it does not debar its victims from power and influence, although like the old illiteracy it disqualifies them for it. Those long-dead men and women who learned to read so that they might read the Bible and John Bunyan would tell us that pride is the greatest of all sins, the father of sin. And the victims of the new illiteracy are proud of it. If you don't believe me, talk to them and see with what pride they trumpet their utter ignorance of any book you care to name.”

Gene Wolfe

"From a house on the Borderland", Horrorstruck (1987), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Women , Men , Books , Learning

“If those who despise us stone us as prophets, they must listen to us as prophets. If they curse us as sorcerers, they must learn to curse from us, as sorcerers.
Let us enlighten the young, and let us be condemned for corrupting the young, like Socrates. Let us awaken the old before they sleep forever, though they must read us in secret like the Kabbalah. […] The difficulties and successes of our books and magazines, and the rejection and misinterpretation of the films made from our ideas—are the flounderings of the human mind upon the Paleozoic shore. We are the sand in its gills; let's not lose our grit.”

Gene Wolfe

Guest of Honor speech at Aussiecon Two (August 1985), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Secret , Books , Idea , Sleep

“Every so often I get optimistic and explain the best method of learning to write for students. I don't believe any of them has ever tried it.”

Gene Wolfe

The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009), afterword to "The Boy Who Hooked the Sun", p. 381
Nonfiction

Learning

“A hundred wise men have said in various ways that love transcends the power of death, and millions of fools have supposed that they meant nothing by it. At this late hour in my life I have learned what they meant. They meant that love transcends death. They are correct.”

Gene Wolfe

"Bed and Breakfast", Dante's Disciples (1995), ed. Edward E. Kramer, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Strange Travelers (2000), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

Love , Life , Death , Men