Quotes about learning

A collection of quotes on the topic of learning, doing, use, thing.

Best quotes about learning

Albert Einstein photo

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Walt Whitman photo

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“We can only learn to love by loving.”

The Bell (1958), ch. 19; 2001, p. 219.

Maya Angelou photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“Life is too short to learn German”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Michael Jordan photo

“To learn to succeed, you must first learn to fail.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman
Desmond Tutu photo

“We learn from history that we don't learn from history!”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Often attributed to Desmond Tutu, actual source is G. W. F Hegel: What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it. Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832)
Misattributed

Mark Twain photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“Learning never exhausts the mind.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
Confucius photo

“You cannot open a book without learning something.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Quotes about learning

“I strongly believe that, as a citizen of the world, any person has the right to learn”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Education for All People and Education for Life

Aristotle photo

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
Cornelius Keagon photo
Hatake Kakashi photo
Angelina Jolie photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Robert Frost photo

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

As quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 261
General sources
Variant: In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

Mehmed II photo

“If even a single hair of my beard learns my secret, I will cut my beard from the root.”

Mehmed II (1432–1481) Ottoman sultan

Source: Freely, John (The Grand Turk)

John Dewey photo

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer
Shams-i Tabrizi photo
Pablo Picasso photo
Martha C. Nussbaum photo
Carl R. Rogers photo
Rosa Parks photo
Tyler Joseph photo
Billie Eilish photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Tupac Shakur photo
Whitney Houston photo

“Learning to love yourself, is the greatest love all”

Whitney Houston (1963–2012) American singer, actress, model, and record producer

Source: Whitney the Greatest Hits

Ozzy Osbourne photo

“Maybe it's not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Source: Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard of Ozz

Leonardo DiCaprio photo

“School, I never truly got the knack of. I could never focus on things I didn't want to learn.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Alvin Toffler photo
Bob Marley photo
Pablo Picasso photo

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Tupac Shakur photo
Robert Baden-Powell photo

“The secret of sound education is to get each pupil to learn for himself, instead of instructing him by driving knowledge into him on a stereotyped system.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

The Scouter http://www.thedump.scoutscan.com/outlook.html (January, 1912)

Marilyn Monroe photo
Louis Zamperini photo
Harry Styles photo

“We never learn, we been here before
Why are we always stuck and running from
The bullets?
The bullets?”

Harry Styles (1994) English singer, songwriter, and actor

"Sign of the Times", written by Harry Styles, Jeff Bhasker, Mitch Rowland, Ryan Nasci, Alex Salibian, Tyler Johnson
Lyrics, Harry Styles (2017)

Kobe Bryant photo
Dorothy Day photo

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

The Long Loneliness (1952), p. 286
Source: The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist

Rudolf Steiner photo
Alice Walker photo

“I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Source: Revolutionary Petunias

Louisa May Alcott photo

“I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.”

Amy, in Ch. 44 : My Lord and Lady
Variant: I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.
Source: Little Women (1868)

Dolly Parton photo

“If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.”

Dolly Parton (1946) American singer-songwriter and actress

Variant: If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.

John Quincy Adams photo
Zig Ziglar photo
John Dewey photo
Jim Carrey photo
Maryam Mirzakhani photo

“I think it's rarely about what you actually learn in class it's mostly about things that you stay motivated to go and continue to do on your own.”

Maryam Mirzakhani (1977–2017) Iranian mathematician

Maryam Mirzakhani press conference after winning Field's Medal | august 2014

Adam Weishaupt photo
Hedy Lamarr photo

“I win because I learned years ago that scared money always loses. I never care, so I win.”

Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000) Austrian-American actress and co-inventor of an early technique for spread spectrum communications and freq…

Popcorn in Paradise (1980)

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva photo

“A long time ago I learned not to put the blame for backwardness in Brazil on the US. We have to blame ourselves. Our backwardness is caused by an elite which for a century didn't think about the majority and subordinated itself to foreign interests.”

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (1945) Brazilian politician, 35th president of Brazil

" Brazil rejects Bush move on climate change talks http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/04/brazil.usa" in: The Guardian, May 31, 2007.

Вивиан Грин photo
Aryabhata photo
Robert Greene photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Viktor E. Frankl photo
Anna Akhmatova photo

“We learned not to meet anymore,
We don't raise our eyes to one another,
But we ourselves won't guarantee
What could happen to us in an hour.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Aristotle photo

“Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
Adrienne Rich photo
Galileo Galilei photo

“I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

As quoted in The Story of Civilization : The Age of Reason Begins, 1558-1648 (1935) by Will Durant, p. 605
Attributed

Margaret Fuller photo
Tupac Shakur photo
James Thurber photo

“All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Shore and the Sea", Further Fables for Our Time (first publication, 1956)
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

Alicia Keys photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo
Plato photo

“Watch a man at play for an hour and you can learn more about him than in talking to him for a year.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Attributed to Plato in Confidence : How to Succeed at Being Yourself (1987) by Alan Loy McGinnis, this is probably a paraphrase of a statement which occurs in Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman Leaving the University Concerning His Behaviour and Conversation in the World (1907) by Richard Lindgard: "Take heed of playing often or deep at Dice and Games of Chance, for that is more chargeable than the seven deadly sins; yet you may allow yourself a certain easie Sum to spend at Play, to gratifie Friends, and pass over the Winter Nights, and that will make you indifferent for the Event. If you would read a man’s Disposition, see him Game; you will then learn more of him in one hour, than in seven Years Conversation, and little Wagers will try him as soon as great Stakes, for then he is off his Guard."
Variants:
You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Attributed to Plato in Food Is the Frosting-Company Is the Cake (2007) by Maggie Marshall
You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Attributed to Plato by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as quoted in "Aspiring philosopher Palin quotes 'Plato'" (9 July 2009) http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/09/palin-plato/
Misattributed

Rosa Parks photo

“From my upbringing and the Bible I learned people should stand up for rights just as the children of Israel stood up to the Pharaoh.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Quoted in The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, by Jeanne Theoharis (2013)

Mehmed II photo
Shirin Ebadi photo

“Any person who pursues human rights in Iran must live with fear from birth to death, but I have learned to overcome my fear.”

Shirin Ebadi (1947) Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

From 1999 interview.
Noted in the October 2003 BBC News profile of Ebadi. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3181992.stm (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

Diogenes of Sinope photo

“The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Stobaeus, iv. 29a. 19
Quoted by Stobaeus

Leonardo DiCaprio photo

“You learn after a while that it's not getting your face recognised that's the payoff. It's having your film remembered.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Anatole France photo

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Je ne sais point de plus grande finesse pour parvenir à aimer que d'aimer, comme on apprend à étudier en étudiant, à parler en parlant, à travailler en travaillant.
Francis de Sales, quoted in Vie de saint François de Sales, évèque et prince de Genève by André Jean Marie Hamon (Librairie Victor Lecoffre, Paris, 1896), Vol. II, Book VII, Ch. V: Son amour pour Dieu
Variant of sourced quotation: Comme on apprend à étudier en étudiant, à jouer du luth en jouant, à nager en nageant; aussi apprend-on à aimer Dieu et le prochain en l'aimant. — Francis de Sales, quoted in Jean-Pierre Camus, "L'esprit du bienheureux saint François de Sales" (1641), Part I, Section 31; published in Oeuvres complètes de saint François de Sales, ed. Jean-Irénée Depéry (Berche et Tralin, Paris, 1875), Vol. I
Misattributed

Serena Williams photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“From childhood we are trained to have problems. When we are sent to school, we have to learn how to write, how to read, and all the rest of it.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Source: 1980s, That Benediction is Where You Are (1985), p. 18
Context: From childhood we are trained to have problems. When we are sent to school, we have to learn how to write, how to read, and all the rest of it. How to write becomes a problem to the child. Please follow this carefully. Mathematics becomes a problem, history becomes a problem, as does chemistry. So the child is educated, from childhood, to live with problems — the problem of God, problem of a dozen things. So our brains are conditioned, trained, educated to live with problems. From childhood we have done this. What happens when a brain is educated in problems? It can never solve problems; it can only create more problems. When a brain that is trained to have problems, and to live with problems, solves one problem, in the very solution of that problem, it creates more problems. From childhood we are trained, educated to live with problems and, therefore, being centred in problems, we can never solve any problem completely. It is only the free brain that is not conditioned to problems that can solve problems. It is one of our constant burdens to have problems all the time. Therefore our brains are never quiet, free to observe, to look. So we are asking: Is it possible not to have a single problem but to face problems? But to understand those problems, and to totally resolve them, the brain must be free.

Niels Bohr photo

“We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.”

Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish physicist

Quoted in Philosophy of Science Vol. 37 (1934), p. 157, and in The Truth of Science : Physical Theories and Reality (1997) by Roger Gerhard Newton, p. 176
Context: What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character … We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord photo

“They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.”

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) French diplomat

and variations
Recognized since the 19th century as a borrowing, possibly used by Talleyrand, from a 1796 letter to Mallet du Pan by French naval officer Charles Louis Etienne, Chevalier de Panat: Personne n'est corrigé; personne n'a su ni rien oublier ni rien apprendre. "Nobody has been corrected; no one has known to forget, nor yet to learn anything."
Sources: Craufurd Tate Ramage Ll.D.Beautiful thoughts from French and Italian authors, E. Howell (1866)
Misattributed

Jesse Owens photo

“Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

As quoted in " Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Messenger of Love https://books.google.com/books?id=3esDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=%22Yoga+Journal%22+Kronisch&source=bl&ots=B895e3lzeI&sig=7V4uALc6CTiPrF02-cV8AAzsgbw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM1enasPLSAhWs6oMKHbpyAbQQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=%22Elisabeth%20Kubler-Ross%22&f=false" by Lennie Kronisch in Yoga Journal, Issue 11, November-December 1976, pp. 18-20
Context: Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from. There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.

Gordon Neufeld photo

“Children learn best when they like their teacher and they think their teacher likes them.”

Gordon Neufeld (1947) Canadian psychologist

Source: Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

Sylvester Stallone photo
Bram Stoker photo

“We learn of great things by little experiences.”

Source: The Jewel of Seven Stars

Robert T. Kiyosaki photo
Haruki Murakami photo