Quotes about learning
page 22

“Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see.”

Henry Adams book The Education of Henry Adams

Source: The Education of Henry Adams

“No matter how much we know in any area there are always new things to learn and things we have previously learned that we need to be refreshed in.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

“What are the lessons to be learned from this journey of the mind? That humans are emotionally fragile, perennially gullible, hopelessly ignorant masters of an insignificantly small speck in the cosmos.
Have a nice day.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Source: Death by Black Hole - And Other Cosmic Quandaries

“It’s too late. He’s already learned how not to drown.”

Celeste Ng book Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

Source: Everything I Never Told You

“The process of learning is a nonstop orgy of wonderment.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

“Learning something means coming into contact with a world of which you know nothing. In order to learn, you must be humble.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

World

“When would he learn that women never stayed where you put them?”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Hidden Away

Women

“There's a palace in your head, boy. Learn to live in it always.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

Source: The Invisibles, Vol. 1: Say You Want a Revolution

Boy

“I learned a world from each / one whom I loved”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Love, World

“I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Decision, Heart

“Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you shall learn nothing.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, Reply to Charles Kingsley (1860)
Context: Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.
Context: Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

Nature

“To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love, Communication

“A person who doesn't learn from the past is an idiot, in my estimation.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Past, Personality

“Every person that you meet knows something you don't; learn from them.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Personality

“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Truth, Faith, Falseness

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Children

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Remarks Prepared for Delivery at the Trade Mart in Dallas
Context: It is fitting that these two symbols of Dallas progress are united in the sponsorship of this meeting, for they represent the best qualities, I am told, of leadership and learning in this city — and leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. The advancement of learning depends on community leadership for financial and political support and the products of that learning, in turn, are essential to the leadership's hopes for continued progress and prosperity. It is not a coincidence that those communities possessing the best in research and graduate facilities — from MIT to Cal Tech — tend to attract the new and growing industries. […] This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level, it is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

Leadership, For Team

“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.”

Mary Catherine Bateson (1939) American anthropologist

“What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

The Waking (1953), The Waking
Source: The Collected Poems
Context: This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Sleep

“I'm learning skills I will use for the rest of my life by doing homework… procrastinating and negotiation.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Life

“One day you will learn that love does not always betray you.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: Seducing an Angel

Love

“Our children may learn about the heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves the architects of the future.”

Jomo Kenyatta (1893–1978) First prime minister and first president of Kenya

Children, Past, Future

“If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

Source: The Chosen

Personality

“Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Love, Music, Waiting

“If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Time

“To look at her, you might not guess that inside she is laughing and crying, at her own stupidities and luckiness, and at the strange enigmatic ways of the world which she will spend lifetime trying to learn and understand.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Stupidity, World, Way, Understanding

“If only life were like a Jules Verne novel, thinks Marie-Laure, and you could page ahead when you most needed to, and learn what would happen.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Life, Thinking

“When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

“We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: Herstory : Women Who Changed The World

“I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Source: 1980s, Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987), p. 2

Past, Future

“You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don't even think about being a writer.”

Jean M. Auel (1936) Novelist

Thinking, Reading

“The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Truth, Forgetting

“There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

World, Understanding, Time, Heart

“I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.”

W.D. Snodgrass (1926–2009) Poet

Love

“But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Happiness, Loss, Parting

“Fascination with horses predated every other single thing I knew. Before I was a mother, before I was a writer, before I knew the facts of life, before I was a schoolgirl, before I learned to read, I wanted a horse.”

Jane Smiley (1949) American novelist

Source: A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck

Life, Reading, Horse

“Oh.' I shot upright. 'I was in Mongolia.'
Note to self: learn to be a less extreme liar.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

“When you learn to read you will be born again… and you will never be quite so alone again.”

Rumer Godden (1907–1998) English writer

Reading

“Belief gets in the way of learning.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Way

“There is only one way to learn … It's through action.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 131.

Way

“I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred,
centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and
sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no creature living as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Falseness

“A long time ago I learned not to explain things to people. It misleads them into thinking they're entitled to know everything I do.”

Lisa Kleypas book Dreaming of You

Source: Dreaming of You

People, Thinking, Time

“Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in light of what they suffer.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Men, People, Light, Suffering

“I couldn't get Him out of my head. Still can't. I spent three solid days thinking about Him. The more He bothered me, the less I coul forget Him. And the more I learned about Him, the less I wanted to leave Him.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Thinking, Forgetting

“People learn twenty-five percent from their teacher, twenty-five percent from listening to themselves, twenty-five percent from their friends, and twenty-five percent from time.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

People, Teachers, Time

“Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Understanding

“The more man learned, the more he realized he did not know.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

The New York Times (20 October 1985)

“Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all of the tricks and has nothing to say.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Art

“Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

Life, Thinking, Singing, Dance

“The more one learns, the more he understands his ignorance.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Understanding

“Anyway, maybe there weren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Pain

“When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Reality

“For if there is one thing I have learned over the years about men, it is that feelings of powerlessness do not usually bring forth their finest qualities.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Men, Feeling

“The French regarded this as a betrayal. It was. They spoke of being cheated by their wartime allies. They were. Clemenceau whose outspoken sympathies for Britain and America (he had been a newspaper correspondent in the United States shortly after the Civil War, had learned American English and married an American) had earned charges from the Right before the war that he was an Anglo-Saxon "tool", was embittered and disillusioned. As the Premier who had pulled France together in the closing period of the war, he realized what so many Frenchmen tended to forget, that without British and American help the war could not in the end have been won. He saw too that without Anglo-American promises of military aid in the future it would be beyond France's power to repel the next German invasion. He had been promised that aid in return for giving up the security of the Rhine, which his generals had demanded. Now France had neither.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

War, Betrayal, Future, Help

“I call upon the American people to affirm with me this American Promise -- that we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, Proclamation 4417 (1976)
Variant: I call upon the American people to affirm with me this American Promise -- that we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated.

People, Justice, Error

“Look out world take a good look
What comes down here
You must learn this lesson fast
And learn it well
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway
Oh no, this is the road to Hell”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

"The Road to Hell (Part 2)"
Song lyrics, The Road to Hell (1989)

World, Hell

“In these facts we discover the cause of the popular discontent and outbreaks which have so frequently threatened the stability of the British throne and the peace of the English people. As early as 1770 Lord Chatham said, 'By the end of this century, either the Parliament must be reformed from within, or it will be reformed with a vengeance from without.' The disastrous failure of Republicanism in France delayed the fulfillment of his prophecy; but when, in 1832, the people were on the verge of revolt, the government was reluctantly compelled to pass the celebrated Reform Bill, which has taken its place in English history beside Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights. It equalized the basis of representation, and extended the suffrage to the middle class; and though the property qualification practically excluded the workingman, a great step upward had been taken, a concession had been made which must be followed by others. The struggle is again going on. Its omens are not doubtful. The great storm through which American liberty has just passed gave a temporary triumph to the enemies of popular right in England. But our recent glorious triumph is the signal of disaster to tyranny, and victory for the people. The liberal party in England are jubilant, and will never rest until the ballot, that 'silent vindicator of liberty', is in the hand of the workingman, and the temple of English liberty rests on the broad foundation of popular suffrage. Let us learn from this, that suffrage and safety, like liberty and union, are one and inseparable.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

People, Peace, History, Failure

“I learned a long time ago never to press where there's something you want to know. Show little interest in the subject, never ask questions, don't make people start asking themselves why you want to know. That way, sooner or later, you'll find out.”

Warren Gulley (1922–2012) American military non-commissioned officer (NCO)

Breaking Cover https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0671245481 (1980), p. 25

People, Way, Question, Time

“Well, I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment. And — I've learned quickly these past few days that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But — now here's a little news flash. Here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

[Alex Johnson, Palin fires back at media, ‘Washington elite’, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26525268/, MSNBC, 2008-09-04, 2008-09-04]
2008, 2008 Republican National Convention

People, Past, Country

“It is when we hurt that we learn.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Variant: When we are judging everything, we are learning nothing.
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 83

Hurt

“When you constantly hear people talking about going the distance, going the distance, you can't help but wonder about it. I learned a lesson: next time I will fight my fight without that doubt.”

Larry Holmes (1949) American boxer

After the Cooney fight, as quoted in "Sport: Larry Holmes: I Still Have It" by Tom Callahan in TIME (21 June 1982) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,925485-3,00.html.

People, Time, Help, Fight

“On our Earth, we’ve perforce learned all the knavery there is to know.”

Poul Anderson book The High Crusade

Source: The High Crusade (1960), p. 131

“Your great demonstration which marks this day in the City of Washington is only representative of many like observances extending over our own country and into other lands, so that it makes a truly world-wide appeal. It is a manifestation of the good in human nature which is of tremendous significance. More than six centuries ago, when in spite of much learning and much piety there was much ignorance, much wickedness and much warfare, when there seemed to be too little light in the world, when the condition of the common people appeared to be sunk in hopelessness, when most of life was rude, harsh and cruel, when the speech of men was too often profane and vulgar, until the earth rang with the tumult of those who took the name of the Lord in vain, the foundation of this day was laid in the formation of the Holy Name Society. It had an inspired purpose. It sought to rededicate the minds of the people to a true conception of the sacredness of the name of the Supreme Being. It was an effort to save all reference to the Deity from curses and blasphemy, and restore the lips of men to reverence and praise. Out of weakness there began to be strength; out of frenzy there began to be self-control; out of confusion there began to be order. This demonstration is a manifestation of the wide extent to which an effort to do the right thing will reach when it is once begun. It is a purpose which makes a universal appeal, an effort in which all may unite.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life, Men, People, World

“The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 259.

God, World, Law, Feeling

“Under the world view possessed by medieval scholars, the path of learning was a path of self-deprecation. … An opposite conception comes in with Bacon’s “knowledge is power.” If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their importance. On the contrary, they begin to swell; the seek triumphs in the material world (knowledge being meanwhile necessarily degraded to skills) which inflate their egotism and self-consideration. Such is a brief history of how knowledge passes from a means of spiritual redemption to a basis for intellectual pride.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 72.

World, History, Knowledge, Indifference

“If the study of history is the study of language in one form or another, and if we really fabricate our past, not merely—weakly—live it; then we can begin to see how the world was Greek once, or was Roman, since every page of consciousness was written in these tongues then. All the central documents—laws, plays, poems, reports, abiding wisdoms, letters, scientific learning, news—were couched in Greek or Latin phrases, and the chief historians consulted them, composed their chronicles from the same speech, in the same words. Don't you see that when a man writes the history of your country in another mother-language, he is bent on conquest?”

William H. Gass book The Tunnel

Source: The Tunnel (1995), p. 271

Wisdom, World, Law, History

“Culture has been distinguished from the other elements of action by the fact that it is intrinsically transmissible from one action system to another from personality to personality by learning and from social system to social system by diffusion. This is because culture is constituted by "ways of orienting and acting," these ways being "embodied in" meaningful symbols.”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Source: Toward a general theory of action (1951), p. 159

Way, Personality

“Unfortunately, too many academics retreat into narrow specialisms, allow themselves to become adjuncts of the corporation, or align themselves with dominant interests that serve largely to consolidate authority rather than to critique its abuses. Refusing to take positions on controversial issues or to examine the role they might play in lessening human suffering, such academics become models of moral indifference and examples of what it means to disconnect learning from public life. This is a form of education, as Howard Zinn notes, where scholars “publish while others perish.” Even many leftist and liberal academics have retreated into arcane discourses that offer them the safe ground of the professional recluse.”

Henry Giroux (1943) American academic

"Higher Education Under Siege: Implications for Public Intellectuals," Thought and Action (Fall 2006), p. 64

Life, Education, Suffering, Indifference

““This is the first award I received…In fact, I consider this priceless. This was presented to me by Sri. Godavarma Bhattan Thampuran of Kodungallur (Cranganore) Palace years ago. I was only 22 then. Those were days when Kodungallur used to witness the best assembly of scholars in Sanskrit and the sasthras. Present on that day were several highly learned men and women. The stage was in front of Sringapuram temple. I presented Bhagavad Dooth Prabhantham Koothu. My interpretation of one of the slokas was a little more elaborate than and different from the custom-worn treatment. The audience liked it. In appreciation, Bhattan Thampuran removed this ring from his finger and put it on mine. The spontaneous gesture in recognition of my art naturally is the most precious to me ”
-Guru Māni Mādhava Chākyār, about his prized possession- the golden ring from the great scholar H. H Bhattan Thampuran”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Awards
Source: K. A. Chandrahasan, In pursuit of excellence (Performing Arts), "The Hindu", Sunday March 26, 1989

Women, Men, Art, Nature

“The Leader of the Future 2 is divided into five parts. In Part One, our book begins where it should, with Peter Drucker’s vision of leadership… Part Two, "Leading in a Diverse World," begins with the recognized world authority on building a learning organization. "Systems Citizenship" presents MIT’s Peter Senge at his best, as he challenges us to understand systems, implement systems intelligence, and build partnerships that are a mandate for the new millennium… Part Three, "Leading in a Time of Crisis and Complexity," begins with Ron Heifetz of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Ron describes new approaches to solving leadership dilemmas as he challenges leaders in "Anchoring Leadership in the Work of Adaptive Progress"… Part Four, "Leading Organizations of the Future," shows how changing context has an impact leadership needs, demanding changes in leadership styles. Charles Handy is one of the great social philosophers of our time… Part Five, "The Quality and Character of the Leader of the Future," begins with one of the most influential thought leaders in history, Stephen Covey. In "Leading in the Knowledge Worker Age."”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: The leader of the future 2, 2006, p. xiv-xvii; preview

Books, Age, World, School

“They learn to tolerate ambiguity and to bring order out of confusion.”

Roger Smith (executive) (1925–2007) CEO

“Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon (1966)

“Som-Som would later learn that the girl's name was Book. Ambiguous and suggestive sentences swirled out from the maroon bud of her nipple. Verses of elegant and cryptic passion followed the orbit of her left eye. Her fingers dripped with poetry.”

Alan Moore Alan Moore's Hypothetical Lizard

Alan Moore's Hypothetical Lizard, #1 (January 2005)
Alan Moore's Hypothetical Lizard (January 2005 - May 2005)

Books, Girl, Passion

“And I don't pretend to know what you know
no no
now please don't pretend to know what's on my mind
if we already knew everything that everybody knows
we would have nothing to learn tonight
and we would have nothing to show tonight
oh but everybody thinks
that everybody knows
about everybody else
nobody knows
anything about themselves
cause they're all worried about everybody else.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Wasting Time.
Song lyrics, On and On (2003)

Thinking

“I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it.
In any intellectual field, one can reach greater heights by standing on the shoulders of others. But that is no longer generally allowed in the software field—you can only stand on the shoulders of the other people in your own company.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Why Software Should Be Free (1991) http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html <br class="br">1990s

People, Science

“We learned dwarves are not meant to fly." came a voice from the edge of the circle.”

Rick Cook (1944) American writer

Wizardry Cursed

Flying

“Her face was that of a boy gang-leader, smooth with the innocence of one who, by the same quirk as blinds a man to the mystery of whistling or riding a bicycle, has never mastered the art of affection or compassion or properly learned the moral dichotomy.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

Art, Boy

“The things I learned from the army - and I think it was a lesson for life - was how to work in unison with other people. How to take responsibility. Things like that I learned in the army.”

Oded Fehr (1970) Israeli-American actor

Interview with Oded Fehr http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/69_interview_with_oded_.htm (2001)

Life, People, Thinking

“The original language of the Divine Principle is Korean, so if you want to become a true authority on the subject you must learn Korean. What if, when you go to the Kingdom of Heaven. the only language is Korean? You would be in deep trouble! Later on. when the Unification Church becomes larger, the official language of our church will be Korean. All official conferences and meetings will be conducted in Korean.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Our Pledge http://www.unification.net/1982/821121.html (1982-11-21)

“One of the most wonderful and engaging things I've learned is that we are the culmination and extension of each other's histories and there is more that binds us together than separates us, and in discovering this, perhaps our needs are timeless and universal.
I have a very deep interest in religion and spirituality. I like the Sufi perspective, which suggests that it is better to participate in the world than to become detached from the world.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

Celtic Women in Music interview (1999)

World, Religion, History, Universe

“A poem is learned by heart and then not again repeated. We will suppose that after a half year it has been forgotten: no effort of recollection is able to call it back again into consciousness.”

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) German psychologist

Source: Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology, 1885, p. 8

Effort, Heart

“Harry Dresden: We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind-graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, White Night (2007), Chapter 31

Love, Life, Pain, Hope

“Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: What is Political Philosophy (1959), p. 68

Understanding, Past

“I know it all —
All ye would ask. But ne'er shall hope be mine
Till the dread secret works its fatal will
In daylight visible, with wrath and scorn,
And ceaseless memory of forgotten things.
Then Jove shall learn what all his sulphurous bolts,
Soul-piercing torments, earthquakes, fiery plagues,
Disease, and loathsome, black deformity,
And all confounding shame, shall ne'er persuade
My voice to utter.”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Prometheus
Poems (1851), Prometheus

Secret, Disease, Hope, Soul

“Just because you are CEO, don't think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I've never forgotten that.”

Indra Nooyi (1955) Indian-born, naturalized American, business executive

Top 15 quotes from PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi

Way, Thinking

“This ideal University of Life … would never take the importance of culture for granted. It would know that culture is kept alive by a constant respectful questioning—not by an excessive and snobbish attitude of respect. Therefore, rather than leaving it hanging why one was reading Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, an ideal course covering nineteenth-century literature would ask plainly “What is it that adultery ruins in a marriage?” Students in the ideal University of Life would end up knowing much the same material as their colleagues in other institutions, they would simply have learned it under a very different set of headings.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“Reclaiming the Intellectual Life for Posterity,” Liberal Education, vol. 95, no. 2 http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-sp09/le-sp09_MyView.cfm

Life, Marriage, Literature, Question

“One never finishes learning about art. There are always new things to discover. Great works of art seem to look different every time one stands before them. They seem to be as inexhaustible and unpredictable as real human beings.”

Ernst Gombrich book The Story of Art

Source: The Story of Art (1978), p. 33.

Art, Time

“He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890)

Thinking

“Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? […] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. V
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

Men, God, War, Happiness

“You have to learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Variations of this quote have been attributed to a number of people, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Samuel Levenson, and Lao Tzu; there is no solid support for any such attribution.
Misattributed

“Man is not supposed to make life. Only God can make a tree. Why should you make a living organism? You should make images of living organisms. It seems presumptuous to attempt to make a thing which breathes and pulsates right there by itself. It's unnatural. What's inhuman about it is, the human way to create, I think, the way we see, from part to part. You do this and then you do that, then you do that and that. Then you learn about composition, you learn about old masters, you form certain ideas about structure. But the inhuman activity of trying to make some kind of jump or leap, where even though you naturally have to paint, after all a painting is only a painting, the painting is always saying, what do you want from me, I can only be a painting, you have to go from part to part, but you shouldn't see yourself go from part to part, that's the whole point That's some kind of a leap.... I'm describing the process of painting.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, pp. 68/69

Life, God, Way, Idea

“Despite his reputation as one of America's foremost "serious" filmmakers, Oliver Stone's name under the "director" caption does not guarantee a good movie. I learned that lesson while enduring the seemingly-endless tedium of The Doors, and was reminded of it during some of the long, drawn-out portions of JFK. However, nothing that Stone has directed — or misdirected — prepared me for the grotesque mess that is Natural Born Killers.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1509 of Natural Born Killers (1994). <br class="br">One-and-a-half star reviews

Nature

“At Wal-Mart, a co-worker once advised me that, although I had a lot to learn, it was also important not to "know too much," or at least never to reveal one's full abilities to management, because "the more they think you can do, the more they'll use you and abuse you." My mentors in these matters were not lazy; they just understood that there are few or no rewards for heroic performance. The trick lies in figuring out how to budget your energy so there'll be some left over for the next day.”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

Evaluation (p. 195)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001)

Thinking

“For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water.
No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water.
Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity.
Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 6 (pp. 137-138)

Life, God, Hate, People

“The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet”

Nat Turner (1800–1831) American slave rebellion leader

The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831)

Reading, Perfection

“Neoclassical economic theory forms the central discourse and behavioral model of contemporary management education. Drawing on research and insights from game theory and behavioral economics we have argued that many of the core assumptions underlying this model are flawed. While we cannot say that the widespread reliance on the Homo economicus model has caused the highly level of observed managerial malfeasance, it may well have, and it surely does not act as a healthy influence on managerial morality. Students have learned this flawed model and in their capacity as corporate managers, doubtless act daily in conformance with it. This, in turn, may have contributed to the weakening of socially functional values and norms like honesty, integrity, self-restraint, reciprocity and fairness, to the detriment of the health of the enterprise. Simultaneously, this perspective has legitimized, or at least not delegitimized, such behaviors as material greed and optimizing with guile. We noted that this model has become highly institutionalized in business education. Fortunately, we believe that the potential for moving away from this flawed model is significant and thus can end this chapter on a more optimistic note for the future of business education.”

Rakesh Khurana (1967) American business academic

Herbert Gintis and Rakesh Khurana. " What Happened When Homo Economicus Entered Business School https://evonomics.com/what-happens-when-you-introduce-homo-economicus-into-business/," in: evonomics.com, July 14, 2016.

Health, Education, Behavior, Game

“You have to find out for yourself. Take the leap. Go as far as you can. Try staying out of touch. Become a stranger in a strange land. Acquire humility. Learn the language. Listen to what people are saying.”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Fresh Air Fiend (2000)

People

“It has been proven psychologically that human beings can only appreciate or apprise, i. e. comprehend and understand, something new, if they can succeed in raising up the subconscious immured in their brain cells into their higher consciousness. If this cannot be achieved, then all preaching is useless. And even the eye has first to learn how to see everything new; it too must therefore be awoken from its latency before it can grasp the seen. Above all, there must be readiness to consider even supposed wonders as the forerunners of forthcoming realities, for only thus can the foundations be laid upon which rational mind can calculate and analyse.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger in a letter to Hermann Jaeger, 31st October 1957, Implosion Magazine, No. 103, p. 20 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

Understanding, Reality

“My child arrived just the other day,
He came to the world in the usual way.
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay.
He learned to walk while I was away.
And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew,
He'd say, "I'm gonna be like you, dad.
You know I'm gonna be like you."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Cat's in the Cradle, written with his wife Sandy Chapin
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

World, Way

Quotes about learning page 22

Quotes about learning
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