Quotes about learning
page 13

“The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Hate, Envy

“Yes, but you need to learn your maths."
"I don't need to, really. I already know how to count to a hundred. And I'm sure I'll never need ore than a hundred of anything.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Love in the Afternoon

“Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”

Herman Melville book Moby-Dick

Source: Moby Dick

Secret, Soul

“Honor, I thought. For real: the guardians should have taught it. Because I hadn't learned it.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Understanding

“I was twenty then. What the hell, I used to say, take your time, Bandini. You got ten years to write a book, so take it easy, get out and learn about life, walk the streets. That’s your trouble: your ignorance of life.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust

Life, Books, Hell, Time

“Frosting

Freedom
Is just frosting
On somebody else's
Cake--
And so must be
Till we
Learn how to
Bake.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Source: The Panther and the Lash

Freedom

“… what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Variant: What you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Secret, Help

“At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Age, Despair

“It is a time of change,'' Sazed said. ''Perhaps it is also time to learn of other truths, other ways.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

Truth, Way, Change, Time

“Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems

Heart

“Play the game, but don’t believe in it – that much you owe yourself … Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man

Game, Boy

“Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Hurtful

“Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.”

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

Book II, Chapter XV.
Source: The Analects, Other chapters

“This mountain of a man was learning that his considerable might- which he'd clearly relied on for- was futile with her.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Needs at Night's Edge

Mountain

“A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Variant: A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.
Source: Interview in The Daily Nexus (5 April 2000), reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt

“It's like picking up an unfamiliar piece of sheet music & starting to stumble through it, only to realize it is a melody you'd once learned by heart, one you can play without even trying.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Music, Heart

“Have you noticed that whatever sport you're trying to learn, some earnest person is always telling you to keep your knees bent?”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Sport, Personality

“That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

1
Variant: It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

Way, Time, Past

“Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not.”

Joseph Alois Schumpeter book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

Source: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

“I know how you feel," I said. "You run into something you totally don't get, and it's scary as hell. But once you learn something about it, it gets easier to handle. Knowledge counters fear. It always has.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Fear, Feeling, Hell, Knowledge

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

Douglas Adams book Last Chance to See

Source: Last Chance to See

Funny

“Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

“Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“Looking for Mr. Right leads to desperation, because there is no Mr. Right. There is no Mr. Right, because there is no Mr. Wrong. There is whoever is in front of us and the perfect lessons to be learned from that person.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Personality, Perfection

“The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with those three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Expanded Universe

Source: "The Happy Days Ahead" in Expanded Universe (1980)
Context: I started clipping and filing by categories on trends as early as 1930 and my "youngest" file was started in 1945.
Span of time is important; the 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.

History, Mathematics, Understanding

“I am still learning.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Variant translation: Still I learn! As translated by Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Poetry and Imagination" (1847) Inscribed next to an image of Father Time in a child's carriage, as quoted in Curiosities of Literature (1823) by Isaac Disraeli. Disraeli's attribution is, however, spurious. The attribution is retraceable to Richard Duppa's The lives and works of Michael Angelo and Raphael (London, 1806), where the author mistakenly attributes a drawing by Domenico Giuntalodi to Michelangelo Buonarroti. The original motto, properly spelled in Duppa as "ANCHORA IMPARO," was popular throughout the 1500's (thus in the course of Michelangelo's life), signalling the return of old age to childhood (bis pueri senex). The motto appeared in one of Giuntalodi's drawings (an image known to us through engravings and etchings by contemporaries), together with the indication that learning is a lifetime endeavor (a Latin phrase from Senaca's 76th Letter to Lucilius is cited to this effect). However, Giuntalodi's drawing--where time's elapse (an hourglass) stands before man's quest for learning--conveighs the "anchora imparo" message in a finely satyrical manner, suggesting the futility of human endeavors (for a kindred antecedent, see 1 Corinthians 13:11), with a specific allusion to humanist learning. See Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa, " Domenico Giuntalodi, peintre de D. Martinho de Portugal à Rome http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rvart_0035-1326_1988_num_80_1_347709", in Revue de l'Art, 1988, No. 80, pp. (52-60). Deswarte-Rosa misleadingly links the "ancora imparo" motto to Dante Alighieri, to whom Deswarte-Rosa attributes a modified version of a citation that Dante offers with critical intent of Seneca in Convivio IV.12.xi. Throughout Convivio IV.12, Dante distinguishes between ordinary empirical learning (depicted at best as futile) and a philosophical learning returning to "first things." Dante's conclusion is that, "lo buono camminatore giunge a termine e a posa; lo erroneo mai non l'aggiunge, ma con molta fatica del suo animo sempre colli occhi gulosi si mira innanzi"--"The good walker arrives at an end and a rest; the one who errs (i.e. goes astray) never reaches it, but with great effort of the will always with gluttonous eyes looks ahead of himself"; ibid. xix. Misattributed Variant: Ancora Imparo (Yet I am learning)

“To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means.”

Brennan Manning book The Ragamuffin Gospel

p. 11 https://books.google.com/books?id=sUTZCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11 1990s, The Ragamuffin Gospel (1990)

Life, God, Light

“Will raised both eyebrows. 'Well, you learn a new thing everyday,' he said reflectively.

'In your case, that's no exaggeration,' Halt said, completely straight-faced.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Emperor of Nihon-Ja

“You got to learn to take what people are willing to give.”

Christina Baker Kline (1964) American writer

Source: Orphan Train

People

“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to John Quincy Adams (8 May 1780)

Chance

“After a while you learn that everything stops.”

Bret Easton Ellis (1964) American novelist

“Knowledge grows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn, and the faster we expand our knowledge base.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Knowledge

“Admitting that you do not know something is the first step to learning.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

“If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, 'Aarggh! Screwed up again!' Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Imagination, Baby

“When I pass, speak freely of my shortcomings and my flaws. Learn from them, for I'll have no ego to injure.”

Aaron McGruder (1974) American cartoonist

Source: The Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read the Newspaper

“Racism is taught in our society… it is not automatic.
It is learned behavior toward persons with
dissimilar physical characteristics.”

Alex Haley (1921–1992) African American biographer, screenwriter, and novelist

Behavior, Personality

“You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.”

David Markson (1927–2010) American writer

Sex, Reading

“There are no mistakes in life,
only lessons. There is no such thing as a negative experience, only
opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of selfmastery.
From struggle comes strength. Even pain can be a wonderful teacher”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Life, Pain, Teachers

“You’re going to have to learn to ride a horse on your own, Phaedra', he said. 'It will make the journey faster.'

'The mule and I have an agreement.'

'The mule and you have similar traits.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Quintana of Charyn

Horse

“All events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Variant: There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.

“There is no cosmic scale on which you can weigh your actions; you learn too late what choices ruin the fragile balance.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“I am learning that a life isn't real unless someone else knows its reality. And I want my life to be real.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Life, Reality

“In my life so far, I have discovered that there are really only two kinds of people: those who are for you, and those who are against you. Learn to recognize them, for they are often and easily mistaken for each other.”

Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015) British singer-songwriter

Life, People

“We are men and our lot in life is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds.”

Carlos Castaneda A Separate Reality

Source: A Separate Reality

Life, Men, World

“Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?”

John Irving book The Hotel New Hampshire

Source: The Hotel New Hampshire

Strong

“and taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love, Life

“He said you couldn't pretend the terrible things in life didn't happen. You can't clean it up. You keep all the refuse and the scars. It's how you learn. And try to make improvements.”

Marisha Pessl Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Source: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Life

“You can't forget the things you did in the past, or you'll never learn from them.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Past, Forgetting

“Hmph," she said. "I'd like to see you learn how to manage sitting and standing up straight in stays and petticoats and a dress with a foot's worth of train!"
"So would I," said Gideon from across the room.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Training

“Learn her skills, honor her sword, and keep her secrets.”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

Secret

“But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?"
Yes… the same age you will be if you don't.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

Source: The Artist's Way

Age, Time, Painting

“It is ironic that many Filipinos learn to love the Philippines while abroad, not at home.”

Ambeth R. Ocampo book Rizal Without the Overcoat

Source: Rizal Without the Overcoat

Love, Home

“You need to screw up to learn. You need to experience to create greatness.”

Laurie Faria Stolarz (1972) American writer

Source: Deadly Little Secret

“Be kind. It's worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them.”

Viggo Mortensen (1958) American actor

People, Effort

“But I am learning that perfection isn't what matters. In fact, it's the very thing that can destroy you if you let it.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Perfection

“I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

Books, Passion

“["The Devil in the Dark"] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction thennow, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Idea, Science

“View your life with KINDSIGHT. Stop beating yourself up about things from your past. Instead of slapping your forehead and asking, “What was I thinking,” breathe and ask yourself the kinder question, “What was I learning?”

Karen Salmansohn American writer

Source: Bounce Back Book

Life, Question, Thinking, Past

“Practice is funny that way. For days and days, you make out only the fragments of what to do. And then one day you've got the thing whole. Conscious learning becomes unconscious knowledge, and you cannot say precisely how.”

Atul Gawande book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Source: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Way, Knowledge

“… for we are all amateurs at life, but if we do not focus too much on our mistakes, a miraculous picture emerges. And we learn that it's not the beauty of the image that warrants our gratitude--it's the chance to paint.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: Finding Noel

Life, Beauty, Chance, Painting

“Become who you are by learning who you are.”

Robert Greene book Mastery

Source: Mastery

“Reading is a gift. It's something you can do almost anytime and anywhere. It can be a tremendous way to learn, relax, and even escape. So, enough about the virtues of reading. Time to read on.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Source: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens: Simple Ways to Keep Your Cool in Stressful Times

Way, Time, Reading

“The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Truth, Books, Beauty, Way

“O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love, God

“I can learn to live with guilt. I don't care about being good.”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

“People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

People, Wise

“I think if you study--if you learn too much of what others have done, you may tend to take the same direction as everybody else.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Source: It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

Thinking, Study

“The marriage partner is not really the problem. No other person can ultimately make you happy. You must learn how to be happy within yourself.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Marriage, Happiness, Problem, Personality

“The wisest man I ever knew taught me something I never forgot. And although I never forgot it, I never quite memorized it either. So what I’m left with is the memory of having learned something very wise that I can’t quite remember.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Memory

“If there's one thing I've learned in the last few months, it's that sometimes you just have to close your eyes and jump.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

“Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.”

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) American science fiction writer

Science

“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.”

Doris Lessing book The Four-Gated City

The Four-Gated City (1969)

Life, Way, Understanding

“a lesson must be lived
in order to be learned
and the clarity to see and stop this now
that is what i've earned”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

“That was another lesson I had learned perhaps too well: people meant pain.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Pain, People

“In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 32 
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Variant: In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Context: The central task of education is to implant a will and a facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

World, Change

“What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Lie, Dead

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records — Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Theme from English B"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

Love, Life, Color, Drink

“Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—
Unless …”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer from Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), The Sentence
Context: Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—
Unless... Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.

Soul, Memory

“We can only learn so much and live.”

Thomas Harris book Hannibal

Source: Hannibal

“… Don't feel sorry for me. I'm glad I had a second chance in life like you said to be smart because I learned a lot of things that I never knew were in this world, and I'm grateful I saw it even for a little bit.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

Life, World, Feeling, Chance

“It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.”

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

Source: God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time

Soul

“To earn more, you must learn more.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

“All that that I learn just teaches me that I know nothing.”

Philippa Gregory book The Lady of the Rivers

Source: The Lady of the Rivers

“Some lessons you learned by the book. Others you learned from cold hard experience. The latter may not be the best way to learn, but it damn well stuck.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: No Place to Run

Books, Way

“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Question, Deep

“I am a woman in process. I'm just trying like everybody else. I try to take every conflict, every experience, and learn from it. Life is never dull.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Life

“When you were in love, you were capable of learning everything and of knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Variant: When you’re in love, you’re capable of learning everything and knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love is the key to understanding of all the the mysteries.
Source: Brida

Love, Understanding, Thinking