Quotes about learning
page 33

“She was a reader; there were many citizens who were not. The prevailing social explanation for illiteracy was that there were people who were temperamentally unsuited for reading—and indeed there were few callings in a computerized, video-saturated world that required literacy. Lilo accepted that, but had always had a feeling that most people never learned to read because they simply were not smart enough.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 5 (p. 49)

People, World, Feeling, Reading

“There have been people who have tried to exploit me. You get chancers out there who just want to make a quick buck, but as long as you tune into them and who they are … The best thing I've learned is, if you're going out, never go out alone - you leave yourself vulnerable. If you've got someone else there you trust, they can say, be wary of that person. I probably used to be too trusting of people.”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

Guardian interview, Saturday 4 July 2009

People, Personality

“The investigation of the possibility that animals might think in terms of concepts and even categories of important objects has been seriously impeded because comparative psychologists have seemed to be almost petrified by the notion of animal consciousness. Historically, the science of psychology has been reacting for fifty years or more against earlier attempts to learn how we think by thinking about our thoughts. …In other realms of scientific endeavor we have to accept proof that is less than a hundred percent rigorous… think of cosmology, think of geology. And Darwin couldn't prove the fact of biological evolution in a rigorous way.”

Donald Griffin (1915–2003) American zoologist

Animal Minds (1994)

Way, Thinking, Science, Animals

“Certainly in Mexico, the Latin American country I know best, white ascends. Certainly, the whitest dinner party I ever attended was a Mexico City dinner party where a Mexican squire of exquisite manner, mustache, and flán-like jowl, expressed himself surprised, so surprised, to learn that I am a writer. One thought he would never get over it. Un escritor... ¿Un escritor...? Turning the word on a lathe of tooth and tongue, until: “You know, in Mexico, I think we do not have writers who look like you,” he said. He meant dark skin, thick lips, Indian nose.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Thinking, Country

“Let us learn how the love of Christ, received into the heart, triumphs gradually but surely over all sin, transforms character, turning even its weakness into strength, and so, from the depths of transgression and the very gates of hell, raises men to God.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 398.

Love, Men, God, Hell

“Among the signs of a learned man is criticising his own words and being informed of various viewpoints.”

Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 119
Regarding Wisdom

“There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.”

Roger Ascham (1515–1568) English scholar and didactic writer

The Schoolmaster (1570), p. 1

“Life After Hate groups have successfully reversed the hatred of thousands and replaced it with empathy, love, and self-forgiveness. If the haters can learn empathy, maybe we can learn empathy toward the haters. When our only response to haters is to hate, we increase our brain’s training to hate and decrease its training to empathize. We become a bit of the enemy we hate.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 32.

Love, Life, Hate, Forgiveness

“That books do not take the place of experience, and that learning is no substitute for genius, are two kindred phenomena; their common ground is that the abstract can never take the place of the perceptive.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

E. Payne, trans., Vol. II, Ch. 7, p. 74
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Books

“It’s never been such a good time to be a crook. In what other country of laws does one enjoy so much freedom to defraud one’s government and fellow citizens without having to worry about cops showing at the door? Small-time crooks sooner or later end up in the slammer, but our big-time con artists, as we’ve come to learn, are now regarded as the untouchables, too well-heeled and powerful to lock up.”

Charles Simic (1938) American poet

"A Thieves' Thanksgiving," http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/nov/26/thieves-thanksgiving/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR+Goya+Ferrante+crooks&utm_content=NYR+Goya+Ferrante+crooks+CID_8376c474295b4e263a32522d2bbfd922&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=A%20Thieves%20Thanksgiving New York Review of Books, November 26, 2014

Law, Freedom, Time, Country

“The more I learned about the history of religion, the more my earlier misgivings appeared justified. The doctrines that I had accepted without question as a child were indeed man-made, constructed over a long period. Science seemed to have disposed of the Creator God, and biblical scholars had proved that Jesus had never claimed to be divine.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

A History of God (1993)

God, Religion, History, Question

“I learned more in the six or seven hours of this experience than I had learned in all my years as a psychologist.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

(quoting Timothy Leary's description of the Psilocybin experience).
Be Here Now (1971)

“The inductive-reasoning system I have described above consists of a multitude of “elements” in the form of belief-models or hypotheses that adapt to the aggregate environment they jointly create. Thus it qualifies as an adaptive complex system. After some initial learning time, the hypotheses or mental models in use are mutually co-adapted. Thus we can think of a consistent set of mental models as a set of hypotheses that work well with each other under some criterion—that have a high degree of mutual adaptedness. Sometimes there is a unique such set, it corresponds to a standard rational expectations equilibrium, and beliefs gravitate into it. More often there is a high, possibly very high, multiplicity of such sets. In this case we might expect inductive reasoning systems in the economy—whether in stock-market speculating, in negotiating, in poker games, in oligopoly pricing, in positioning products in the market—to cycle through or temporarily lock into psychological patterns that may be non-recurrent, path-dependent, and increasingly complicated. The possibilities are rich.”

W. Brian Arthur (1946) American economist

Source: Inductive Reasoning and Bounded Rationality (The El Farol Problem) (1994), p. 8

Game, Thinking, Time, Dependency

“If you are really anxious to learn the way to God, He has not left Himself without a witness, nor you without a teacher. Go to the recorded Christ, and look at that history; listen to those words which survive in the Gospels. And go to the living Christ, to Him who has said, "lam the Light of the world, he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." And dim as may be your outset — more of night than morning in your twilight, as you follow on you shall know the Lord, and with the light that radiates from Himself, your path will shine brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 90.

Life, God, World, Way

“I cannot see why it is necessary that every deduction from algebra should be bound to certain conventions incident to an earlier stage of mathematical learning, even supposing them to have been consistently used up to the point in question. I should not care if any one thought this treatise unalgebraical, but should only ask whether the premises were admissible and the conclusions logical.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Advertisement, p.3
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Mathematics, Question

“Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Of Books.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

Books

“There is really nothing that can be done except by an individual. Only individuals can learn. Only individuals can think creatively. Only individuals can cooperate. Only individuals can combat statism.”

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

Essays on Liberty (1954), Essays on Liberty https://books.google.com/books?id=SugpAQAAMAAJ&dq=There+is+really+nothing+that+can+be+done+except+by+an+individual.+Only+individuals+can+learn.+Only+individuals+can+think+creatively.+Only+individuals+can+cooperate.+Only+individuals+can+combat+statism.&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22There+is+really+nothing+that+can+be+done+except+by+an+individual.+Only+individuals+can+learn.+Only+individuals+can+think+creatively.+Only+individuals+can+cooperate.+Only+individuals+can+combat+statism.%22

Thinking

“Meaning is a much more fundamental notion than truth, indeed more fundamental even than the notion of "reality" itself. The basic argument [of the essay] was that claims about truth or reality are meanings made by people according to patterns that they have learned, and that trying to understand how and why people make the meanings they do is more useful than fighting over the truth of their claims.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 156

People, Truth, Understanding, Reality

“Fortunately I have never learned to take the good advice I give myself nor the counsel of my fears.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 1

Fear

“There's no doubt that my forehand and backhand can match anyone, it's about the place that they're put in. I can hit the ball as hard as anyone can, but I think it's more about where I'm hitting the ball. Instead of 90 mph it can just be a 50 mph forehand, but the placement is more important. So I've been working on that a lot more. When you're working on things, maybe your performance drops a little bit or you're trying new things in every tournament you're going in so that's just a process of being an athlete because you're learning, you're adding new things to your game. When I sit with my notes, for instance, instead of hitting a hard forehand return, I would like to hit an angled forehand return instead.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Tennis Week The Tennis Week Interview: Sania Mirza http://www.tennisforum.com/showthread.php?t=148586&page=98

Game, Thinking

“People ask me, "Do you have optimism about the world, about how terrible it is?" And I say, "Yes, it's great the way it is" … I had the wonderful privilege of sitting face to face with [a Hindu guru] and the first thing he said to me was "Do you have a question?", cause the teacher always answers questions… I said, "Yes, I have a question." I said, " Since in Hindu thinking all the universe is divine, a manifestation of divinity itself, how can we say no to anything in the world? How can we say no to brutality to stupidity to vulgarity to thoughtlessness?" And he said, "For you and me, you must say yes." Well, I learned from my friends who were students of his that that happened to be the first question he asked his guru, and we had a wonderful conversation for an hour there.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 2, Chapter 12
The Power of Myth (1988)

People, Stupidity, World, Way

“Being good can never do without the effort to learn, step by step, and in real circumstances of life, how to separate religious and moral words from an expelling mechanism, one which demands human sacrifice, so as to make of them words of mercy which absolve, which loose, which allow creation to be brought to completion.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " The man blind from birth and the Creator's subversion of sin http://girardianlectionary.net/res/fbr_ch-1_john9.htm", p. 20.

Life, Effort

“The best way to learn Japanese is to be born as a Japanese baby, in Japan, raised by a Japanese family.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Dave Barry Does Japan (1992)

Family, Way, Baby

“The specialist serves as a striking concrete example of the species, making clear to us the radical nature of the novelty. For, previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he is "a scientist," and "knows" very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with an the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XII: The Barbarism Of "Specialisation"

Men, Fashion, Nature, Universe

“Apollo at Delphi, through the oracular utterance of his priestess, pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Of him it is related that he said with sagacity and great learning that the human breast should have been furnished with open windows, so that men might not keep their feelings concealed, but have them open to the view. Oh that nature, following his idea, had constructed them thus unfolded and obvious to the view.”
Delphicus Apollo Socratem omnium sapientissimum Pythiae responsis est professus. Is autem memoratur prudenter doctissimeque dixisse, oportuisse hominum pectora fenestrata et aperta esse, uti non occultos haberent sensus sed patentes ad considerandum. Utinam vero rerum natura sententiam eius secuta explicata et apparentia ea constituisset!

Vitruvius book De architectura

Preface, Sec. 1
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book III

Men, Feeling, Idea, Nature

“I saw men go up and down,
In the country and the town,
With this tablet on their neck,—
'Judgement and a judge we seek.'
Not to monarchs they repair,
Nor to learned jurist's chair;
But they hurry to their peers,
To their kinsfolk and their dears;
Louder than with speech they pray,—
'What am I? companion, say.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Astræa
1840s, Poems (1847)

Men, Country

“Appropriate patterns of reproductive, gender, and sexual conduct are all products of specific cultures and all can be viewed as examples of socially scripted conduct. Western societies now have a system of gender and sexual learning in which gender differential scripts are learned prior to sexual scripts, but take their origins in part from the previously learned gender scripts… There are two important points: The first is that both gender and sexuality are learned forms of social practice, and the second is that looking to "natural differences" between women and men for lessons about sexual conduct is an error.”

John Gagnon

"The Explicit and Implicit Use of the Scripting Perspective in Sex Research", Annual Review of Sex Research, Vol. 1, (1990), 5

Women, Men, Error, Nature

“5779. Wise Men learn by other Men's Harms; Fools, by their own.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Men, Fools

“The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. … The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage will appear the figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe.”

Edward Said book Orientalism

Orientalism (1978)

World, Appearance

“In one year I learned as much about anti-Semitism as would be enough for three mens' lifetimes. For you cannot wound the sacred convictions of a people, what their heart loves and respects, without causing deep pain and shedding the heart's blood. It was 17 years ago, and my heart bleeds yet.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Jewish Problem

Love, Men, Pain, People

“I think one of the keys to leadership is recognizing that everybody has gifts and talents. A good leader will learn how to harness those gifts toward the same goal.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "America's Best Leaders: Benjamin Carson, Surgeon and Children's Advocate" http://www.usnews.com/news/best-leaders/articles/2008/11/19/americas-best-leaders-benjamin-carson-surgeon-and-childrens-advocate, U.S. News (November 19, 2008)

Thinking, Leadership

“Only when he has suffered does the fool learn.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 218.

Fools, Suffering

“I will not go into a story unprepared. I will do my homework, and that's something I learned at an early age.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[John Sears, RTNDA Communicator, RTNDA; The Association; Radio Television Digital News Association; Volume 54, August 2000, Interview with Ed Bradley]

Age

“Community college is like a disco with books: "Here's ten dollars; let me get my learn on!"”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Bring the Pain (HBO, 1996)

Books, Communication

“...he took his lesson of political morality as learned, his notice to quit as duly served, and supposed his education to be finished.

Everyone thought so, and the whole City was in a turmoil. Any intelligent education ought to end when it is complete. One would then feel fewer hesitations and would handle a surer world. The old-fashioned logical drama required unity and sense; the actual drama is a pointless puzzle, without even an intrigue. When the curtain fell on Gladstone's speech, any student had the right to suppose the drama ended; none could have affirmed that it was about to begin; that one's painful lesson was thrown away.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Chapter X Political Morality

Pain, World, Education, Feeling

“I find that I would like now, best of all, to be a good conversationalist. I know I'm not one at present. Oh, I can sit and talk a little of this and that, but I realize that I haven't any definite or profound knowledge. I won't be satisfied with just a patter, a surface glaze of information. I don't want short-cuts to learning. I want to know all about the thing I study.
I'd like to be able to hold my own, to meet on a common ground, with scientists, inventors, clerics, doctors, athletes, authors.
The most worthwhile thing in life is to store your mind with knowledge.
I wish now that I had been able to go to college, if only so that I might have had appreciations earlier in the game.
People often say to me now that I have my home, my career, fame (if you call it that), there must be nothing left for me to live for. But there is everything left to live for. All the things I don't know about, all the things I want to know about.
Pictures, I've discovered, were practically all I did know about up to very recently. I've had to work so hard, to concentrate so closely, that I never have had time to read or to travel or to think about other things. I'm just at the beginning of living…”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"Discoveries About Myself". Motion Picture, October 1930, pg. 58 & 90. (Brewster Publications). https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n563/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n595/mode/2up

Life, People, Travel, Home

“In short, to remember is to reconstruct in part on the basis of what we have learned or said since. That's normal, that's how we remember. I tell you this to encourage you to reactivate some of these profiles of excitation, instead of simply digging obsessively in an effort to find something that's already there, as shiny and new as you imagine it was when you first set it aside … Remembering is a labor, not a luxury.”

Umberto Eco book The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2004)

Imagination, Effort, Parting

“The paucity of its vocabulary and syntax is for the Beats essentially expressive of withdrawal from the standard civilization and its learning. On the other hand this paucity gives, instead of opportunities for thought and problem solving, considerable satisfaction in the act and energy of speaking itself, as is true of any simple adopted language, such as pig Latin. But this can have disadvantages. One learns to one’s frustration that they regard talk as an end in itself, as a means of self-expression, without subject matter. In a Beat group it is bad form to assert or deny a proposition as true or false, probable or improbable, or to want to explore its meaning.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

(describing the language of the “Beat” generation, p. 175.
Growing Up Absurd (1956)

Problem, Falseness

“I learned that you can't truly own anything, that true ownership comes only in the moment of giving.”

Mia Farrow (1945) American actress, singer, humanitarian and former fashion model

What Falls Away (1997)

“Not long after Miles and Eric hitch to St. Louis, Graham turns to me and says, "Let's hitch to Chicago!" "Right now?" I ask, peering up from my American government text. "Why not?" says Graham. "You've got to learn to do things when you want to; otherwise you'll be just like one of the plastic people, the dead people."”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

So by one A.M. we are on the road. ...
Page 40. It's the fall of 1964. Satin is a freshman at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. "Plastic" became one of his favorite adjectives.
Confessions of a Young Exile (1976)

People, Dead

“Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can’t be taught.”

Paul Desmond (1924–1977) American jazz musician

Unsourced

“We do not know nearly as much as we should about how children learn language, but if there is one thing we can say with assurance it is that knowledge of grammatical nomenclature and skill in sentence-parsing have no bearing whatsoever on the process.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)

Children, Knowledge

“Children till 10. years old to serve as nurses. from 10. to 16. the boys make nails, the girls spin. at 16. go into the ground or learn trades.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Jefferson's Farm Book as quoted in The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/, by Henry Wiencek, Smithsonian Magazine, (October 2012) Attributed

Children, Girl, Boy

“People are a bit blind. They don’t see life. Being a photographer I see life, every inch of it. I’m obsessed with nature and animals and the earth; I find concrete things that distract me. Most people are the opposite… they find life boring, squirrels or sparrows boring, whereas I find them fascinating. It has to do with the way we live. It probably started with religion which leads some people astray. To fight over whose god is better has nothing to do with love or spirituality. Perhaps it’s guilt. We are suppressed and spend our time trying to figure out who we are. The most shocking thing I’ve learned concerns abuse, child abuse, animal abuse, abuse to every living creature. There is a world of little Hitlers out there. Slaughterhouses, vivisection and experimenting on animals for no reason is sick. Luckily younger people are becoming more aware.”

Linda McCartney (1941–1998) American photographer

Interview with Linda McCartney http://oobujoobu.tumblr.com/post/10590341050/interview-with-linda-mccartney by Karen Fox, Diamond Hard Music Entertainment, 1989.

Love, Life, God, People

“Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on.”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

Letter to Emily Holmes Coleman (2 February 1934) http://www.case.edu/artsci/engl/VSALM/mod/brandelmcdaniel/index/library.htm

Love, Suffering

“The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him and imitate Him.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 364

Love, God, Knowledge

“In missional churches, the baby birds have been pushed out of the nest and are learning to fly for themselves.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 193

Bird, Baby, Flying

“It isn't that some gay will get some rights. It's that everyone else in our state will lose rights. For instance, parents will lose the right to protect and direct the upbringing of their children. Because our K-12 public school system, of which 90% of all youth are in the public school system, they will be required to learn that homosexuality is normal, equal and perhaps you should try it. And that will occur immediately, that all schools will begin teaching homosexuality.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

2000s

Children, Youth, School, Parent

“I'm very self-destructive. I take it way too far most of the time. I'm the type of person who likes to jump into things hard. I do know my limits and I'm continually learning more about myself, as far as being hungover the next day or saying things that I don't mean or ruining other people's good times.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Mike Osegueda (March 29, 2005) "Appetizing chaos - The bands involved with the tour make sure they live up to the name", The Fresno Bee, p. B1.

People, Way, Time, Personality

“We have learned coordination of mind and body and the "ki breathing methods". Therefore we can bring the ki of the universe into our bodies at anytime. When a water pump is dried out, no water can flow from the well up through the pump. To start this flow again we must put some water back into the pump. In the same way, ki does not flow strongly in a person suffering from illness or misfortune. Let us practice "kiatsuho" to put back into these people, stimulate their own flow of ki, and give them a fresh start to happiness.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

16. Kiatsuho - pressing with ki
Ki Sayings (2003)

Happiness, People, Way, Suffering

“Oceans of horse-hair, continents of parchment, and learned-sergeant eloquence, were it continued till the learned tongue wore itself small in the indefatigable learned mouth, cannot make unjust just.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Horse

“[Boulding grasps the significance of sociobiology's emphasis on biogenetics] that there are biogenetic factors in learning capacity and potential can hardly be denied… [yet] biogenetically imposed limits to human learning… seem to be much more remote… than are the limitations imposed by the biogenetic structure.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution, 1978, p. 21 as cited in: W.R. Brown and M.J. Schaefermeyer (1980) "Progress in communication as a social science". In: Dan Nimmo eds. Communication Yearbook 4. p. 38

“Ye fetted pinnacles, ye fanes sublime,
Ye towers that wear the mossy vest of time;
Ye massy piles of old munificence,
At once the pride of learning and defence;
Ye cloisters pale, that, lengthening to the sight,
To contemplation, step by step, invite;
Ye temples dim, where pious duty pays
Her holy hymns of everlasting praise -
Hail! Oxford, hail!”

Thomas Warton (1728–1790) English literary historian, critic, poet

"Triumph of Isis" (1749).

Time

“An aristocratic society may hold that a soldier or a man of learning is superior to a rich manufacturer or banker, but in a democratic society the latter are inevitably put higher, if only because their achievement is more readily comprehended by the inferior man, and he can more easily imagine himself, by some favour of God, duplicating it.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

God, Imagination

“You can know almost anything about G-d, provided you put the right questions to Him. You have to learn how to put the questions, and they have to be accurate and airtight. […] [M]y father, for instance, doesn't know that two atoms of hydrogen bind with one atom of oxygen to form a water molecule. Yet it's G-d's truth, and an important one. You don't know it […] you believe it because you read it somewhere, or a teacher told you. I know it. I've put the question, and He answered, straight out. G-d will answer a high school boy. He asks only that you use common sense, pay very close attention to Him, not be sloppy, and count and measure correctly. G-d ignores sloppy questions. Sloppiness is the opposite of G-dliness. G-d is exact. He is marvelously, purely exact. Theology is all slop. Moses gave the best answers you could get, three thousand years ago, and he was no theologian.”

Herman Wouk (1915–2019) Pulitzer Prize-winning American author whose novels include The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and …

"Inside, Outside", p. 567 of the hardcover edition. The quote is fictional physicist Mark Herz answering the protagonist's question "What can you know about G-d? You either believe or you don't."

Truth, School, Quotes, Boy

“He [Hitler] had learned much from Leon Trotzky, whose slogan of the permanent revolution he now adopted: ‘The German Revolution will not be concluded until the whole of the German nation is given a new form, a new organization, and a new structure.”

Konrad Heiden (1901–1966) German journalist and historian

Source: Der Fuehrer, Hitler’s Rise to Power (1944), p. 499

“Islamic culture in its traditional form has striven to preserve this integrated spiritual view of the world in a way we have not seen fit to do in recent generations in the West. […] There is the potential for establishing new and valuable links between Islamic civilisation and the West. Perhaps, for instance, we could begin by having more Muslim teachers in British schools, or by encouraging exchanges of teachers. Everywhere in the world people are seemingly wanting to learn English. But in the West, in turn, we need to be taught by Islamic teachers how to learn once again with our hearts, as well as our heads.”

Charles, Prince of Wales (1948) son of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Speech on A Sense of the Sacred: Building Bridges Between Islam and the West http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speechesandarticles/a_speech_by_hrh_the_prince_of_wales_titled_a_sense_of_the_sa_1083050310.html to Wilton Park, 13 December 1996. 1990s

People, World, School, Way

“We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. There will come with the greater love of science greater love to one another. Living more nearly to Nature is living farther from the world and from its follies, but nearer to the world's people; it is to be of them, with them, and for them, and especially for their improvement. We cannot see how impartially Nature gives of her riches to all, without loving all, and helping all; and if we cannot learn through Nature's laws the certainty of spiritual truths, we can at least learn to promote spiritual growth while we are together, and live in a trusting hope of a greater growth in the future.”

Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) American astronomer

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896, p. 186.

Love, People, Truth, World

“But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 151

World, Fight

“The world is always full of brilliant youth which fades into grey and embittered middle age: the first flowering takes everything. The great men are those who have developed slowly, or who have been able to survive the glamour of their early florescence and to go on learning from life.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

"Joseph and His Brothers"; first published in The Saturday Review of Literature (6 June 1936)
Not Under Forty (1936)

Life, Men, Youth, Age

“It was the devout hope of Macaulay… and of many others, that the diffusion of new learning among the higher classes would see the dissolution of Hinduism and the widespread acceptance of Christianity. The missionaries were of the same view, and they entered the education field with enthusiasm, providing schools and colleges in many parts of India where education in the Christian Bible was compulsory for Hindu students. The middle classes accepted Western education with avidity and willingly studied Christian scriptures, but neither the dissolution of Hindu society so hopefully predicted nor the conversion of the intellectuals so devoutly hoped for showed any sign of materialization. On the other hand, Hinduism assimilated the new learning, and the effects were soon visible all over India in a revival of a universalistic religion based on the Vedanta.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Education, School, Religion, Hope

“I think nine times out of ten the worst impulses we get are when we're behind the wheel of a car. That's why I don't think its such a good idea to have a gun … in the glove compartment. Cause chances are, if it's there, sooner or later, you're gonna use it — 'course, then again, what are you gonna do when someone cuts you off on the freeway? Just let them go? Yeah — you pretty much have to shoot them, y'know, otherwise they won't learn nothin.”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

Jim Carrey's Unnatural Act (1991)

Cars, Idea, Thinking, Chance

“Count yourself lucky,” the potter went on, “that you have understood this now and not spent your years in vain hope. This much have you learned, and no learning is wasted.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book IV: Taran Wanderer (1967), Chapter 19 (Annlaw)

Hope

“Entertainment and learning are not opposites; entertainment may be the most effective mode of learning.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 66-67

“I still haven’t learned to deal with situations like that very well — but I don’t think you should, because then you’re accepting defeat. It’s good to be stubborn, to be hard on yourself.”

Jo Ankier (1982) British athlete and television personality

On leading all the way through a race and being beaten at the finish.
Jewish Chronicle, 17 August 2007, p. 11-12: "The calendar girl who's going for gold"

Thinking

“Republicans won big, running as Republicans, in 2004. But once they took control of Congress, they started acting like Democrats and lost big. There is a lesson in that somewhere but whether Republicans will learn it is another story entirely.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/08/26/random_thoughts?page=full&comments=true, 26 August 2008. 2000s

“Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as working-days, to be showing the relics of learning, as monks do the relics of their saints — without working one — one single miracle with them?”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book V (1761-1762), Ch. 1.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

“Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality. Those who have the gift of creative expression in unusually large measure disclose the meaning of the individuality of others to those others. In participating in the work of art, they become artists in their activity. They learn to know and honor individuality in whatever form it appears. The fountains of creative activity are discovered and released. The free individuality which is the source of art is also the final source of creative development in time.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Art, Appearance, Time

“Though he died in 1946, Keynes still dominated economics at Cambridge in the mid-1960s. It wasn't just that all the leading figures among the faculty, Richard Kahn, Joan Robinson, Brian Reddaway, David Champernowne, Nicholas Kaldor, and James Meade, had been his pupils and/or collaborators. It was the tone of the place. The study of economics, theoretical or empirical, was driven by the desire to improve the conduct of economic policy. This did not mean that pure theory was neglected. Indeed, in those years Robinson was fighting a stirring battle in the realms of high theory with Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nor was Cambridge innocent of the cutting edge of econometric technique. Richard Stone, who, following Keynes's suggestions, had created the first modern national income accounts, was still director of the Department of Applied Economics where much of modern econometrics was pioneered. Nonetheless, we were taught that theory and technique should serve the higher cause of rational economic policies, and to use our newly learned econometric expertise to write essays on unemployment, or inflation, or the balance of trade, or some other topic at the top of the current political agenda.”

John Eatwell, Baron Eatwell (1945) British economist

"Citizen Keynes", 1994

Study, Fight

“Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities — the political, the religious, the educational authorities — who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing — forming in our minds — their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness, chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

How to Operate Your Brain (1994) http://yoism.org/?q=node/47, a guided meditation spoken by Timothy Leary and set to music.

Education, History, Question, Thinking

“What disquieted Confucius was "leaving virtue untended and learning unperfected, hearing about what is right but not managing either to turn toward it or to reform what is evil." (7:3) The disciple of Confucius was surely all too aware that his task was one calling not for amazement and miracle but for constant "cutting, filing, carving, polishing" (1:15) in order to become a fully and truly human being, a worthy participant in society.”

Herbert Fingarette (1921–2018) Philosopher

Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (1998)

Evil

“Parson Amen's speculations on this interesting subject, although this may happen to be the first occasion on which he has ever heard the practice of taking scalps justified by Scripture. Viewed in a proper spirit, they ought merely to convey a lesson of humility, by rendering apparent the wisdom, nay the necessity, of men's keeping them-selves within the limits of the sphere of knowledge they were designed to fill, and convey, when rightly considered, as much of a lesson to the Puseyite, with abstractions that are quite as unintelligible to himself as they are to others; to the high-wrought and dogmatical Calvinist, who in the midst of his fiery zeal, forgets that love is the very essence of the relation between God and man; to the Quaker, who seems to think the cut of a coat essential to salvation; to the descendant of the Puritan, who whether he be Socinian, Calvinist, Universalist, or any other "1st," appears to believe that the "rock" on which Christ declared he would found his church was the "Rock of Plymouth"; and to the unbeliever, who, in deriding all creeds, does not know where to turn to find one to substitute in their stead. Humility, in matters of this sort, is the great lesson that all should teach and learn; for it opens the way to charity, and eventually to faith, and through both of these to hope; finally, through all of these, to heaven.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Source: Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848), Ch. XI

Love, Wisdom, Men, God

“As no one can adventure nearer the throne of God by virtue of his rank, his wealth, or his talent, so no one is kept farther from that throne by his low condition, or by his poverty of wealth, of learning, or of intellect. The prince and the sage are not more welcome to heaven than the poor and ignorant.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 455.

God, Wealth

“I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe that an artist has to take some moral responsibility for what he or she is putting out there. And I think a lot of these young kids are going to have to learn the hard way before they realize that you can actually do some damage if you're being careless or frivolous in what you're saying.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rolling Stone interview (2002)

Way, Thinking

“I observe, that of late Chymistry begins, as indeed it deserves, to be cultivated by Learned Men who before despis’d it; and to be pretended to by many who never cultivated it, that they may be thought not to ignore it: Whence it is come to passe, that divers Chymical Notions about Matters Philosophical are taken for granted and employ’d, and so adopted by very eminent Writers both Naturalists and Physitians. Now this I fear may prove somewhat prejudicial to the Advancement of solid Philosophy: For though I am a great Lover of Chymical Experiments, and though I have no mean esteem of divers Chymical Remedies, yet I distinguish these from their Notions about the causes of things, and their manner of Generation.”

Robert Boyle book The Sceptical Chymist

Source: The Sceptical Chymist (1661), Preface Introductory to the Following Treatise

Men, Fear, Lovers

“You could not tell a potential customer, expecting a learned and ancient magician, that you were not eve fully grown. Magnus had started lying about his age young, and had never dropped the habit.
It did get a little embarrassing sometimes when he forgot what lie he'd told to whom. Someone had once asked him what Julius Caeser was like, and Magnus had stared at him for much too long and said, 'Not tall?”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Source: The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013), p. 20.

Lie, Age, Lying

“So little time we live in Time,
And we learn all so painfully,
That we may spare this hour's term
To practice for Eternity.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

"Bearded Oaks", Eleven Poems on the Same Theme (1942)

Time

“There are two problems in painting. One is to find out what painting is and the other is to find out how to make a painting. The first is learning something and the second is making something.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, The Pratt lecture (1960), p. 113

Problem, Painting

“We have come here to learn about the creations, about God's secret, and about God's grace. We are the form of light. There are six kinds of lives and we are the form of light. We have come here to learn the sirr, the secret connection between ourselves and His power, to study our Father and the story of where we were before. Within this body, within this show, there is much we must learn. We have come here to learn, not to dance on this dramatic stage or to watch show after show. We have come here to open and look within everything and see our Father. Each thing that we enjoy or feel sorrow about must be opened, and we must see God within. That is the lesson we have come to learn.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

God, Secret, Feeling, Study

“For the first thing a proprietor learns, and painfully at that, is: Trust is fine, but control is better.”

Elfriede Jelinek book The Piano Teacher

P 5
The Piano Teacher (1988)

“Learning an imposed method seemed not in my nature”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Quote from his autobiography,Unfinished Journey”
Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

Nature

“If various races and nationalities can live together peaceably in the United States, why is it not within the bounds of possibility that they can learn to live this way throughout the earth?”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

An American Peace Policy (1925)

Way

“I can't say, over the miles, that I had learned what I had wanted to know because I hadn't known what I wanted to know. But I did learn what I didn't know I wanted to know.”

William Least Heat-Moon book Blue Highways

Part Ten, Chapter 4.
Blue Highways (1982)

“To some extent, of course, we're all impostors—we all play roles when on the stage of life, presenting a different public self than the private self we share with intimates, and morphing both selves as circumstances demand. Displaying a facade and misleading our audience are defensive behaviors learned early.”

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries (1942) Dutch academic

Source: The Leader on the Couch, 2011, p. 16

Life, Behavior

“The approach to the study of economic history that dominates the presentation of the subject in this volume is that of the economist whose immediate and primary function is to study the production and distribution of wealth with the objective of learning how the nation's economic progress can be promoted and its standard of living advanced. It can be called the functional approach to economic history. Although the narrative should provide such knowledge of the general background of economic history as is needed for most purposes in the interpretation of political history, and has frequently been turned aside to indicate the reactions thus involved, this has been a secondary rather than a primary consideration in the selection and organization of the material. Some material has been included because it served certain of the other objectives mentioned in the introductory chapter, though for the most part these objectives are served also by the material primarily of significance in relation to the major objective.”

Chester W. Wright (1879–1966) American economic historian

Chester W. Wright (1941). Economic History of the United States, p. xi-xii " Wright (1941)

History, Knowledge, Study, Parting

“To learn about oneself, a living thing, you have to watch, learn anew each minute.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

4th Public Talk, Bombay (Mumbai), India (17 February 1971)
1970s

“A diverse community is a resilient community, capable of adapting to changing situations. However, diversity is a strategic advantage only if there is a truly vibrant community, sustained by a web of relationships. If the community is fragmented into isolated groups and individuals, diversity can easily become a source of prejudice and friction. But if the community is aware of the interdependence of all its members, diversity will enrich all the relationships and thus enrich the community as a whole, as well as each individual member. In such a community information and ideas flow freely through the entire network, and the diversity of interpretations and learning styles-even the diversity of mistakes-will enrich the entire community.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

Maturana and Varela (1987) The Tree of Knowledge as cited in: Fritjof Capra (1996) The Web of Life. p. 330

Communication, Idea, Change

“Learning is most often considered a process of getting rather than giving. This is most evident in conceptions of student/teacher roles: Teachers give and students get. Yet, in adult learning both giving and getting are critical.”

David A. Kolb (1939) American psychologist

[Kolb, DA, Osland JS, Rubin IM, Organizational Behavior: an experiential approach, 1971, 7, 2001, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, English, 42]

Teachers

“[Cus D'Amato] told me, 'You're the type of guy who has to be hurt to learn.' I'm pissed off today because he was right about everything.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2005-06-02-tyson-saraceno_x.htm?csp=34 On his family

Guy, Hurt

“Barnes dismissed his own past criticism of the World War II unconditional surrender policy as valid but superficial; for he had learned from General Albert C. Wedemeyer’s book that the murder of Germans and Japanese was the overriding aim of World War II – virtually an Anglo-American scalping party.”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

1968 https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/cold-war-myths/

War, Books, World, Past

“I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it. These, Govinda, are some of the thoughts in my mind.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Siddhartha (1922)

Love, World, Perfection, Despair

“Tarzan of the Apes lived on in his wild, jungle existence with little change for several years, only that he grew stronger and wiser, and learned from his books more and more of the strange worlds which lay somewhere outside his primeval forest.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 9 : Man and Man

Books, World, Change

“Ninety years from now I have no doubt that Vanderbilt University will still be fulfilling this mission. It will still uphold learning, encourage public service, and teach respect for the law. It will neither turn its back on proven wisdom or turn its face from newborn challenge. It will still pass on to the youth of our land the full meaning of their rights and their responsibilities. And it will still be teaching the truth — the truth that makes us free and will keep us free.”

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

1963, Address at Vanderbilt University

Wisdom, Truth, Youth, Law

“Learning to see the structures within which we operate begins a process of freeing ourselves from previously unseen forces and ultimately mastering the ability to work with them and change them.”

Peter M. Senge (1947) American scientist

The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990)

Change

“Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones.”

Alfred Whitney Griswold (1906–1963) American historian

Quoted by John F. Kennedy in a speech at Yale University (11 June 1962).

Idea, Freedom, Falseness

“To Harriet Harman. "Before turning to domestic issues, I was going to be nice to the right hon. and learned Lady. She has had a difficult week. She had to explain yesterday that she dresses in accordance with wherever she is going: she wears a helmet on a building site, she wears Indian clothes in the parts of her constituency with a large representation of Indian people, so when she goes to a Cabinet meeting, she presumably dresses as a clown. As I said, I was going to be nice to her before her previous response."”

William Hague (1961) British politician

02 April 2008, House of Commons, Prime Minister's Questions.

People, Parting, Clothes

“Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. But to survive, we must learn.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

Deming: The Way We Knew Him http://books.google.com/books?id=VKBz5RW5yFcC&pg=PA125&dq=%22learning+is+not+compulsory%22+%22+survival%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fcqtUtH0BYbioATs44HQAw&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBjgy#v=onepage&q=%22learning%20is%20not%20compulsory%22%20%22%20survival%22&f=false (1995) This quote is often cited as “Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.”

“Editions and Revisions. The printed Bible text of Luther had the same fate as the written text of the old Itala and Jerome's Vulgate. It passed through innumerable improvements and mis-improvements. The orthography and inflections were modernized, obsolete words removed, the versicular division introduced (first in a Heidelberg reprint, 1568), the spurious clause of the three witnesses inserted in 1 John 5:7 (first by a Frankfurt publisher, 1574), the third and fourth books of Ezra and the third book of the Maccabees added to the Apocrypha, and various other changes effected, necessary and unnecessary, good and bad. Elector August of Saxony tried to control the text in the interest of strict Lutheran orthodoxy, and ordered the preparation of a standard edition (1581). But it was disregarded outside of Saxony.
Gradually no less than eleven or twelve recensions came into use, some based on the edition of 1545, others on that of 1546. The most careful recension was that of the Canstein Bible Institute, founded by a pious nobleman, Carl Hildebrand von Canstein (1667-1719) in connection with Francke's Orphan House at Halle. It acquired the largest circulation and became the textus receptus of the German Bible.
With the immense progress of biblical learning in the present century, the desire for a timely revision of Luther's version was more and more felt. Revised versions with many improvements were prepared by Joh.- Friedrich von Meyer, a Frankfurt patrician (1772-1849), and Dr. Rudolf Stier (1800-1862), but did not obtain public authority.
At last a conservative official revision of the Luther Bible was inaugurated by the combined German church governments in 1863, with a view and fair prospect of superseding all former editions in public use.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's Bible club

Fate, Books, Change, Time

“You really have to let me fight my own battles. You can't constantly second-guess me and try to protect me. It's stifling, Christian. I'll never flourish with your incessant interference. I need some freedom. I wouldn't dream of meddling in your affairs.
…if we are to have any hope of a future together, you have to trust me and trust my judgment. Yes, I'll get it wrong sometimes--I'll make mistakes, but I have to learn.
…I know you want to control everything, and I understand why, but you can't. It's an impossible goal…you have to learn to let go.”

E. L. James book Fifty Shades Darker

Fifty Shades Darker (2011) Anastasia Steele, Chapter 11, p. 273-274.

Dreams, Hope, Understanding, Freedom

“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.”

Charlton Ogburn (1911–1998) American journalist and author

From "Merrill's Marauders: The truth about an incredible adventure" http://www.harpers.org/archive/1957/01/0007289 in the January 1957 issue of Harper's Magazine Usually misattributed to Petronius See Brown, David S. "Petronius or Ogburn?", Public Administration Review, Vol. 38, No. 3 (May - Jun., 1978), p. 296 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0033-3352(197805%2F06)38%3A3%3C296%3APOO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z alternate version:As a result, I suppose, of high-level changes of mind about how we were to be used, we went though several reorganizations. Perhaps because Americans as a nation have a gift for organizing, we tend to meet any new situation by reorganization, and a wonderful method it is for creating the illusion of progress at the mere cost of confusion, inefficiency and demoralization. The Maurauders (1959) chapter 2, page 60

Life, Change, Time, Training

Quotes about learning page 33

Quotes about learning
page 33