Quotes about learning
page 23

Thiruvalluvar photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Sarah Silverman photo
Richard Behar photo

“What happens when bosses ignore memos from subordinates? The country is now learning the answer to that question in a most painful way.”

Richard Behar American journalist

On July 10, 2001, an FBI agent in Phoenix [Arizona] wrote a memo raising serious concerns about Middle Eastern men attending U. S. flight schools. The memo never made its way up the chain of command, and no action was taken. ––Richard Behar, introd. to "FBI's 'Phoenix' memo Unmasked", Fortune [date? ], [date accessed? ]. (See (incomplete) list of Behar's Fortune articles in his section of his Publications http://www.richardbehar.com/articles/fortune/fortune_all.html [some defunct links].)

Margaret Thatcher photo
Frederick Buechner photo
George Horne photo

“Human learning, with the blessing of God upon it, introduces us to divine wisdom; and while we study the works of nature the God of nature will manifest himself to us; since, to a well-tutored mind, “The heavens,” without a miracle, “declare his glory, and the firmament showeth his handy-work.””

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

George Horne (bp. of Norwich.) (1799). Discourses on several subjects and occasions. Vol. 1,2, p. 357; As quoted in Allibone (1880)

James Hudson Taylor photo

“Wave after wave of trial rolled over us; but at the end of the year some of us were constrained to confess, that we had learned more of the loving-kindness of the Lord than in any previous year of our lives.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 285).

Thomas R. Marshall photo
Henry Hazlitt photo

“Suppose a clothing manufacturer learns of a machine that will make men’s and women's overcoats for half as much labor as previously. He installs the machines and drops half his labor force.This looks at first glance like a clear loss of employment. But the machine itself required labor to make it; so here, as one offset, are jobs that would not otherwise have existed. The manufacturer, how ever, would have adopted the machine only if it had either made better suits for half as much labor, or had made the same kind of suits at a smaller cost. If we assume the latter, we cannot assume that the amount of labor to make the machines was as great in terms of pay rolls as the amount of labor that the clothing manufacturer hopes to save in the long run by adopting the machine; otherwise there would have been no economy, and he would not have adopted it.So there is still a net loss of employment to be accounted for. But we should at least keep in mind the real possibility that even the first effect of the introduction of labor-saving machinery may be to increase employment on net balance; because it is usually only in the long run that the clothing manufacturer expects to save money by adopting the machine: it may take several years for the machine to "pay for itself."After the machine has produced economies sufficient to offset its cost, the clothing manufacturer has more profits than before. (We shall assume that he merely sells his coats for the same price as his competitors, and makes no effort to undersell them.) At this point, it may seem, labor has suffered a net loss of employment, while it is only the manufacturer, the capitalist, who has gained. But it is precisely out of these extra profits that the subsequent social gains must come. The manufacturer must use these extra profits in at least one of three ways, and possibly he will use part of them in all three: (1) he will use the extra profits to expand his operations by buying more machines to make more coats; or (2) he will invest the extra profits in some other industry; or (3) he will spend the extra profits on increasing his own consumption. Whichever of these three courses he takes, he will increase employment.”

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Curse of Machinery (ch. 7)

Jagadish Chandra Bose photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo
George W. Bush photo
John Gay photo

“Whence thy learning? Hath thy toil
O'er books consumed the midnight oil?”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Introduction, "The Shepherd and the Philosopher"; "Midnight oil" was a common phrase, used by Quarles, Shenstone, Cowper, Lloyd, and others.
Fables (1727)

Rumi photo

“Learn from Ali how to fight
without your ego participating.
God's lion did nothing
that didn't originate
from his deep center.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

"Ali in Battle" an account of Ali ibn Abi Talib's explanation as to why he declined to kill someone who had spit in his face as Ali was defeating him in battle, in Ch. 20 : In Baghdad dreaming of Cairo
Disputed, The Essential Rumi (1995)

Edwin Boring photo
Ash Carter photo
Ingrid Newkirk photo
Alice Walker photo
James A. Garfield photo

“Let us learn wisdom from this illustrious example. We have passed the Red Sea of slaughter; our garments are yet wet with its crimson spray. We have crossed the fearful wilderness of war, and have led our four hundred thousand heroes to sleep beside the dead enemies of the Republic. We have heard the voice of God amid the thunders of battle commanding us to wash our hands of iniquity, to 'proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.' When we spurned his counsels we were defeated, and the gulfs of ruin yawned before us. When we obeyed his voice, he gave us victory. And now at last we have reached the confines of the wilderness. Before us is the land of promise, the land of hope, the land of peace, filled with possibilities of greatness and glory too vast for the grasp of the imagination. Are we worthy to enter it? On what condition may it be ours to enjoy and transmit to our children's children? Let us pause and make deliberate and solemn preparation. Let us, as representatives of the people, whose servants we are, bear in advance the sacred ark of republican liberty, with its tables of the law inscribed with the 'irreversible guaranties' of liberty. Let us here build a monument on which shall be written not only the curses of the law against treason, disloyalty, and oppression, but also an everlasting covenant of peace and blessing with loyalty, liberty, and obedience; and all the people will say, Amen.”

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

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“I expected too much of educators. I expected them to understand, in a sense, the sugar-coated concepts of LISP used in AI that were embodied in the Logo language. It was then that I learned that computers were built to make money, not minds.”

Gary Kildall (1942–1994) Computer scientist and entrepreneur

Unpublished memoir Computer Connections, on the prevalence of BASIC in programming education; quoted in a eulogy http://www2.gol.com/users/joewein/eulogy.htm delivered by Tom Rolander

Elaine Paige photo

“Learn to take rejection, keep fit and work only with the best in your field.”

Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress

As quoted in "Portrait of the artist: Elaine Paige, actor" by Laura Barnett in The Guardian (22 May 2007)

Yoshida Kenkō photo

“The truly enlightened man has no learning, no virtue, no accomplishments, no fame.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

38
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)

Frederick Douglass photo
Albert Jay Nock photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“Our sages have taught us to learn one thing; `As in the Self, so in the Universe.' It is not possible to scan the universe as it is to scan the self. Know the self and you know the universe.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Young India (8 April 1926)
1920s

Irvin D. Yalom photo

“One of the most important things was from a patient who said to me what a pity it was that he had to wait until now, when he was riddled with death, to learn how to live. And I have used that phrase many times: hoping that if you introduce people, in an appropriate way, to their mortality that might change the way they live and allow them to trivialise the trivia in their life.”

Irvin D. Yalom (1931) American psychotherapist and writer

The grand old man of American psychiatry on what he has learnt about life (and death) in his still-flourishing career, The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/irvin-d-yalom-interview-the-grand-old-man-of-american-psychiatry-on-what-he-has-learnt-about-life-10134092.html

Jane Austen photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“Silence is a learned practice that requires far more than just not talking. Not talking is not silence; it's just not talking.”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Entering the Castle : An Inner Path to God and Your Soul (2007), p. 39 (Based on the 'Interior Castle' by Teresa of Ávila)

Antonin Scalia photo
Gottfried Helnwein photo
Francis de Sales photo

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.”

Francis de Sales (1567–1622) French bishop, saint, writer and Doctor of the Church j

Quoted by Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus in The Spirit of Saint Francis de Sales, ch. 1, Pg. 3 (1880)

“Learning to cherish others is the best solution to our daily problems, and it is the source of all our future happiness and good fortune.”

Kelsang Gyatso (1931) Tibetan writer and lama

Modern Buddhism: The Path of Compassion and Wisdom (2011)

James A. Michener photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“To strengthen the work of Congress I strongly urge an amendment to provide a four-year term for Members of the House of Representatives—which should not begin before 1972. The present two-year term requires most members of Congress to divert enormous energies to an almost constant process of campaigning—depriving this nation of the fullest measure of both their skill and their wisdom. Today, too, the work of government is far more complex than in our early years, requiring more time to learn and more time to master the technical tasks of legislating. And a longer term will serve to attract more men of the highest quality to political life. The nation, the principle of democracy, and, I think, each congressional district, will all be better served by a four-year term for members of the House. And I urge your swift action. Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. That conflict is not an isolated episode, but another great event in the policy that we have followed with strong consistency since World War II. The touchstone of that policy is the interest of the United States—the welfare and the freedom of the people of the United States. But nations sink when they see that interest only through a narrow glass. In a world that has grown small and dangerous, pursuit of narrow aims could bring decay and even disaster. An America that is mighty beyond description—yet living in a hostile or despairing world—would be neither safe nor free to build a civilization to liberate the spirit of man. In this pursuit we helped rebuild Western Europe. We gave our aid to Greece and Turkey, and we defended the freedom of Berlin. In this pursuit we have helped new nations toward independence. We have extended the helping hand of the Peace Corps and carried forward the largest program of economic assistance in the world. And in this pursuit we work to build a hemisphere of democracy and of social justice. In this pursuit we have defended against Communist aggression—in Korea under President Truman—in the Formosa Straits under President Eisenhower—in Cuba under President Kennedy—and again in Vietnam.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Sueton photo

“Once a woman declared that she was desperately in love with him, and he took her to bed with him. "How shall I enter that item in your expense ledger?" asked his accountant later, on learning that she had got 4,000 gold pieces out of him; and Vespasian replied, "Just put it down to 'passion for Vespasian'."”
Expugnatus autem a quadam, quasi amore suo deperiret, cum perductae pro concubitu sestertia quadringenta donasset, admonente dispensatore, quem ad modum summam rationibus vellet inferri, "Vespasiano," inquit, "adamato".

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Vespasian, Ch. 22

Koichi Tohei photo
Paul Cézanne photo
Jerry Coyne photo

“Job learned the wisdom of silence before God, but it appears many Christians have abandoned this value in our wordy world.”

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

Friedrich Hayek photo
David McNally photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Aldo Palazzeschi photo
Horace photo

“When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s minds may take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”
Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis, ut cito dicta percipiant animi dociles teneantque fideles: omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat.

Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Lines 335–337; Edward Charles Wickham translation

Richard Feynman photo

“I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Part 5: "The World of One Physicist", "The 7 Percent Solution", p. 255
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

Jane Roberts photo
Joseph Dietzgen photo
Hermann Ebbinghaus photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo

“They who think they know all, learn nothing.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 257

Daniel Levitin photo
Anthony Burgess photo
James Whitbread Lee Glaisher photo
Samuel Johnson photo
William Montgomery Watt photo

“I am not a Muslim in the usual sense, though I hope I am a “Muslim” as “one surrendered to God”; but I believe that embedded in the Qur’an and other expressions of the Islamic vision are vast stores of divine truth from which I and other occidentals have still much to learn.”

William Montgomery Watt (1909–2006) Scottish historian

Islam and Christianity Today: A Contribution to Dialogue https://books.google.com/books?id=4YlTAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, Routledge Library Editions, 1983, p. IX.

Lucy Aharish photo

“One of the topics [on the show last week] was the murder of women in the Arab sector, what is referred to, unfortunately, […] as 'honor killing' and has nothing to do with [anything worthy of] honor. The guest in the studio was a woman who had 20 years of experience working for the sake of those same women who die for no good reason, a woman whose everyday job was a holy work for the sake of thousands of Arab women who need a voice that will shout out and cry out their cries. After she had accused the government and the police and everyone of incompetence, I asked her, in a somewhat aggressive manner, as it were, '[…] Where are we in all of this? Where are we Arab women to teach and discipline our sons that a man has no right over a woman? […]' During the commercial break, she got up and told me that I had to learn how to talk to Arabs because the tone that I adopted and the things that I said were said to gain approval from Jews. So I've come to tell you today that I haven't come for approval from you; that I haven't come for approval from anyone; and this is the message that I want you to digest very, very well. In my life I have been accused of many things: that I am the fifth column; that an Arab will always stay an Arab, no matter how liberal he may look; that I bring shame on my family for being in a relationship with a person outside my religion. I've received threats after asking Palestinian residents live on the show why they don't go out against Hamas men, who use them and bring them to their slaughter; I've been attacked on Yom ha-Shoah and Yom ha-Zikaron that the managers at Arutz 2 dared to put an Arab on a show such as that as the host on a day such as that; I've been told that I make Arab women stray off the path of proper behavior; and that I've forgotten where I come from being an 'Ashkenazified', 'Judaized' Arab. So they blamed and they talked—as if that, in itself, made them right.”

Lucy Aharish (1981) Arab-Israeli journalist

Source: Lucy Aharish's campus speech http://www.onlife.co.il/%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94/%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%99%D7%92%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A8/85312/%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A9-%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%91%D7%90%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%90-%D7%97%D7%9F-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A3-%D7%90%D7%97%D7%93 at "מנהיגות היום את המחר". Onlife. 9 November 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2015. Video available.

Béla H. Bánáthy photo
Henry Miller photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Rob Pike photo
Peter M. Senge photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
George Santayana photo
Kamal Haasan photo
Bill de Blasio photo

“My father was a picture of courage in terms of his war service and strength, and yet in his decline, I learned primarily negative lessons. I learned what not to do.”

Bill de Blasio (1961) American politician and mayor of New York City

said in an interview quoted by Javier C. Hernandez of The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/nyregion/from-his-fathers-decline-de-blasio-learned-what-not-to-do.html.

Thomas Browne photo
J. M. Barrie photo
William Cowper photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Cat Stevens photo

“I had to learn my faith and look after my family, and I had to make priorities. But now I've done it all and there's a little space for me to fill in the universe of music again.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

On getting back into the music business, as quoted in "The Billboard Q and A: Yusuf Islam" by Nigel Williamson, in Billboard Magazine (17 November 2006)

Robert M. Pirsig photo
Stuart A. Umpleby photo
Lizzie Deignan photo
Junot Díaz photo

“If you think learning salsa is your future, you’re going to be pretty insufferable in salsa classes.”

Junot Díaz (1968) Dominican-American writer

Lunch with the FT interview (July 2014) https://www.ft.com/content/a438f98e-01f4-11e4-bb71-00144feab7de

Diane Sawyer photo

“I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention.”

Diane Sawyer (1945) American journalist

Attributed to Diane Sawyer in: Ellen Sue Stern (1993) I Do: Meditations for Brides. p. 9

Gideon Mantell photo
George S. Patton IV photo

“A man was wise if heavy and tardy, like all phlegmatic temperaments; learned if he wrote books with one eye on the public and the other on his colleague.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

describing the state of Germans in the 19th century, pp. 82-83.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

Kenan Malik photo
Rowland Hill (preacher) photo
David Foster Wallace photo
Ono no Komachi photo

“So much I have learned:
the blossom that fades away,
its color unseen,
is the flower in the heart
of one who lives in this world.”

Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet

Source: Helen Craig McCullough's translations, Kokin Wakashū: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry (1985), p. 174

Scott Shaw photo
Mike Malloy photo
Manmohan Singh photo

“I don’t get angry, I don’t want to use harsh words. They are our colleagues and we have to work with them. But they also have to learn to work with us.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

Responding to the opposition of Communist Party of India (Marxist) towards the India–United States Civil Nuclear Agreement, as quoted in "‘Anguished’ PM to Left: If you want to withdraw, so be it" http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070811/asp/frontpage/story_8179523.asp, The Telegraph (India) (11 August 2007)
2006-2010

Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Now if plurality and difference belong only to the appearance-form; if there is but one and the same Entity manifested in all living things: it follows that, when we obliterate the distinction between the ego and the non-ego, we are not the sport of an illusion. Rather are we so, when we maintain the reality of individuation, — a thing the Hindus call Maya, that is, a deceptive vision, a phantasma. The former theory we have found to be the actual source of the phaenomenon of Compassion; indeed Compassion is nothing but its translation into definite expression. This, therefore, is what I should regard as the metaphysical foundation of Ethics, and should describe it as the sense which identifies the ego with the non-ego, so that the individual directly recognises in another his own self, his true and very being. From this standpoint the profoundest teaching of theory pushed to its furthest limits may be shown in the end to harmonise perfectly with the rules of justice and loving-kindness, as exercised; and conversely, it will be clear that practical philosophers, that is, the upright, the beneficent, the magnanimous, do but declare through their acts the same truth as the man of speculation wins by laborious research … He who is morally noble, however deficient in mental penetration, reveals by his conduct the deepest insight, the truest wisdom; and puts to shame the most accomplished and learned genius, if the latter's acts betray that his heart is yet a stranger to this great principle, — the metaphysical unity of life.”

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 273 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/273/mode/2up-274
On the Basis of Morality (1840)