Quotes about learning
page 41

“Thus I saw full surely that it is readier to us to come to the knowing of God than to know our own Soul. For our Soul is so deep-grounded in God, and so endlessly treasured, that we may not come to the knowing thereof till we have first knowing of God, which is the Maker, to whom it is oned. But, notwithstanding, I saw that we have, for fulness, to desire wisely and truly to know our own Soul: whereby we are learned to seek it where it is, and that is, in God. And thus by gracious leading of the Holy Ghost, we should know them both in one: whether we be stirred to know God or our Soul, both are good and true.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 56

God, Soul

“As with all theories, we can learn something from agency theory and transaction-costs economics, since they emphasize something others hide. But as with all theories, they also distort; in fact, I will argue that their distortions outweigh the value of what they highlight.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1970s, Complex organizations, 1972, p. 220

“What they learned […] was to speak on the phones in such a way that your hearer couldn't help but understand what you meant, and in such a way that you, speaking, had no choice but to express what you meant, they learned to make speech — transparent, like glass, so that through the words the face is seen truly.”

John Crowley book Engine Summer

Engine Summer (1979), chapter 1.4

Way, Understanding, Help

“When you're finally up at the moon looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people.”

Frank Borman (1928) NASA astronaut

Newsweek magazine, 23 December 1968 http://www.spacequotations.com/earth.html

People, World, Hell

“The private reader of listener can become an executant of felt meaning when he learns the poem or the musical passage by heart. To learn by heart is to afford the text or music an indwelling clarity and life-force.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 3 (p. 9).

Life, Music, Heart

“But it’s not so hard, learning to picture yourself as part of a great chain. One that began long before you, and will go on long after.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 21 (p. 387)

Parting

“What should be recognized at this point is the fact that Mussolini, whatever else he was, was a collectivist, who conceived human beings as social animals. He had learned that man was a communal being from Marx.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, (2001), p. 55

Communication, Animals

“My early book learning came to me as naturally as the seasons in … the little town in which I grew up. … Quite early I began to find a special charm in an unpeopled world … of lava rock and sagebrush desert. … I was often more purely happy at such times than I think I have ever been since.”

Richard McKenna (1913–1964) American writer

Statement made in 1962, as quoted in the Boise Weekly Vol. 7, No. 39 (8 April 1999) http://www.thesandpebbles.com/mckenna/richard_mckenna.html

Happiness, Books, World, Nature

“Personal computers will make our future adult population simultaneously more mathematically able and more visually literate. Ten years from now, teenagers are likely to enjoy a much richer panorama of options because the pursuit of intellectual achievement will not be tilted so much in favor of the bookworm, but instead cater to a wider range of cognitive styles, learning patterns, and expressive behaviors.”

Nicholas Negroponte book Being Digital

Being Digital (1995)

Behavior, Mathematics, Future, Personality

“Young Knight learn to love God and revere women so that your honour grows. Practice knighthood and learn the Art that dignifies you, and brings you honour in wars. Wrestle well and wield lance, spear, sword, and dagger manfully, whose use in others' hands is wasted. Strike bravely and hard there! Rush to strike or miss. Those with wisdom loath the one forced to defend. This you should grasp: All arts have length and measure. Whatever you undertake, use deliberation. In earnest or in play, be of good cheer and vitality, so you may be attentive and with good courage ponder what action you should take, so that none may touch you, since good courage and strength make your enemies hesitate. Keep in mind to give no-one any advantage. Avoid foolhardiness, do not attempt to match four or six opponents at once. Restrain your ambition, this will benefit you. He is a courageous man who can stand against his equal, while it is no shame to flee from four or six.”

Johannes Lichtenauer (1300–1389) Founder and grand master of the German School of Swordsmanship

MS 3227a

Love, Wisdom, Women, God

“And my generals, by the way, they're not going on television, OK? So the enemy can learn all about it. Oh, well, then we attack.”

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

2010s, 2016, January, Speech at (18 January 2016)

Way

“For man to become successful, for man to establish himself as the ruler of the planet, it was necessary for him to use his brain as something more than a device to make the daily routine of getting food and evading enemies a little more efficient. Man had to learn to control his environment.”

Isaac Asimov book The Tragedy of the Moon

"The Tragedy of the Moon," The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (July 1972)
General sources

Food, Success

“Brethren, we can rule our tempers, and we ought. Open the gospel, that most profound philosophy of the human soul, and yet most simple and practical directory of human duty; study it, fill your whole nature with its inspiration; set Christ before you; look upon His calm forehead and unstormed breast; think how He endured all contradiction of sinners, and endured them to the cross; and on the cross learn of Him then, for He was meek and lowly of heart.”

Henry Giles (1809–1882) Irish minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 376.

Soul, Nature, Thinking, Study

“We should not go to the people and say, "Here we are. We come to give you the charity of our presence, to teach you our science, to show you your errors, your lack of culture, your ignorance of elementary things." We should go instead with an inquiring mind and a humble spirit to learn at that great source of wisdom that is the people.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)

Wisdom, People, Error, Science

“Until we learn the language of those outside the Church, the language of their hearts and the language of their minds, we will never be able to communicate properly. -Appalachian Melody.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Liner Notes

Communication, Heart

“So the fact that I had worked in more than a dozen countries and have been working for 25 years trying to implement health, education and social protection programmes, I think really helped me inside the World Bank Group and helped me to feel a sense of closeness to our frontline staff. But it’s a complicated organization… I’m still learning… and the ethnography will continue until I’m done with my work at the World Bank Group.”

Jim Yong Kim (1959) Korean-American physician and anthropologist, 12th President of the World Bank

UN News Centre, Interview with Jim Yong Kim, 7 October 13

Health, World, Education, Feeling

“I feel strong in challenges, believing that personal improvement and fulfillment come through the continual process of learning from both negative and positive experiences.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On both praise and persecution - "'ATTRIBUTING THE SATELLITES SUCCESS TO ME IS BLASPHEMY' – T.B. JOSHUA" http://www.modernghana.com/print/247180/1/attributing-the-satellites-success-to-me-is-blasph.html Modern Ghana (November 4 2009)

Feeling, Strong, Personality

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

"A Few Words to a Young Writer" http://www.ursulakleguin.com/WordsYoungWriter.html (2008)

Truth, Fear, Art, Way

“There were women in the golden age of Greece, called hetaerae, who were celebrated by Socrates and philosophers of his time. Although they existed solely for their own pleasure and that of men, they were respected for their independence of mind and spirit and thought of highly by the Greeks. Single women in today's world can function like hetaerae, learning from many and giving back to whom they will, and for the woman who enjoys such a life, it can be a good one, and one both she and society can be the better for.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Life, Women, Men, Pleasure

“In my strategy, the training for killing enemies is by way of many contests, fighting for survival, discovering the meaning of life and death, learning the Way of the sword, judging the strength of attacks and understanding the Way of the "edge and ridge" of the sword.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Life, Death, Way, Understanding

“The student of culture is concerned with a characteristic which man displays more markedly than any other known creature — the ability to transmit what he has learned. In following the procedure I suggest, the learning of Homo sapiens would be treated as a further specialization of the concept of grades, with the recognition that in some species — possibly even in some orders — the ability to learn may represent not only an improvement, in an evolutionary sense, but also an increase in vulnerability. Man's unique, high ability to learn, coupled as it is with a small amount of built-in behavior, represents such a vulnerability.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1960s, Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), p. 30-31

Behavior, Sense

“That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Camille Pissarro was Cézanne's 'teacher' in impressionistic landscape painting; they frequently painted together in open air.
Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 164, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Teachers, Drawing, Painting

“You have need of learning, children, in order that the whorl will someday have need of you.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 1, Ch. 2
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

Children

“But no - what’s this? The branch on which he is sitting is weak. That is not all: wood-mice are gnawing away at it: before long they will eat through it and it will snap and fall. The branch sags down over a well. Aha! Escape! Perhaps our hero can swim? But the well is dry and there are snakes writhing and hissing on its bed. As the branch bends lower, he perceives a solitary blade of grass on wall of well. On top of the blade of grass gleams a drop of honey. What is our hero to do? What action does our puranic man quintessential Indian, take in the situation? He bends with the branch and licks up the honey…. What did you expect? Some neat solution to the problem? The tiger changes its mind and goes away? Amitabh Bachchan leaps to the rescue? Don’t be silly. One strength of Indian mind is that it knows some problems cannot be resolved and it learns to make best of them. That is the Indian answer to the insuperable difficulty. One does not fight against that by which one is certain to be overwhelmed; but one finds the best way, for oneself, to live with it. This is our national aesthetic. Without it, india as we know it could not survive.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel (1989)

Way, Problem, Grass, Change

“In the folklore of systems engineering, there are sayings, “If it isn't testable, it isn't a requirement,” and, “If it is not quantifiable, it is not testable.” I had always tended to subscribe to the particle of wisdom in these sayings. One of the many lessons that I learned from the CATIE experience, however, was that systems engineering had to be able to deal directly and purposively with what are usually considered to be strictly qualitative (unquantifiable) aspect of systems, such as quality of life, for example. The agricultural practices of these small farmers in Central America is such a large part of their lives that to change any part of their agricultural practices might be seen as diminishing their quality of life - even with respect to the color of the beans that the new practices might require. But even if we cannot deal directly with quality of life or user friendliness or enmity/sympathy, we can identify quantifiable figures of merit relating to these qualitative aspects and if we find enough figures of merit and combine them suitably, we might eventually obtain agreement that we have captured the essence of the qualitative aspect, at least as far as this particular set of stakeholders is concerned.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Systems Movement: Autobiographical Retrospectives (2004)

Life, Wisdom, Color, Change

“The quality that accompanies the emergence of learning in the evolution of higher animals, namely intelligence, is surprisingly difficult to define.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins (1977)

Intelligence, Animals

“Hinduism can survive modern times if only the people learn to bend with the wind. People will have to find a balance between the new and the old.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

It's Sir Mark Tully in UK honors list, 2001

People, Time

“Both Joanne and I can recall many times when we wish we'd said or done something different. But we didn't, and we've learned not to feel too guilty about that. What gives me my good feelings is that we always cared and always tried to do our best.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

Foreword of Many Ways to Say I Love You

Feeling, Time

“His name was William Saroyan. He was the first writer I fell in love with, boyishly in love. I was held by his unaffected voice, his sentimentality, his defiant individualism. I found myself in the stories he told… I learned from Saroyan that you do not have to live in some great city — in New York or Paris — in order to write… When I was a student at Stanford, a generation ago, the name of William Saroyan was never mentioned by any professor in the English Department. William Saroyan apparently was not considered a major American talent. Instead, we undergraduates set about the business of psychoanalyzing Hamlet and deconstructing Lolita. In my mind Saroyan belongs with John Steinbeck, a fellow small town Californian and of the same generation. He belongs with Thornton Wilder, with those writers whose aching love of America was formed by the Depression and the shadow of war. … Saroyan's prose is as plain as it is strong. He talks about the pleasure of drinking water from a hose on a summer afternoon in California's Central Valley, and he holds you with the pure line. My favorite is his novel The Human Comedy… In 1943, The Human Comedy became an MGM movie starring Mickey Rooney, but I always imagined Homer Macaulay as a darker, more soulful boy, someone who looked very much like a young William Saroyan…”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

"Time Of Our Lives" (26 May 1997) http://www.cilicia.com/armo22_william_saroyan_6.html

Love, War, Pleasure, Soul

“Relearning and more difficult than learning.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

Réapprendre et plus difficile qu'apprendre.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 79, 27082 2892-7, ; Tribun du peuple, fructidor an II, 1794]
On Maximilien de Robespierre

“There is an aspiration we all have which needs to be fulfilled. That’s what I’m talking about. There is something that I can offer that fulfills that place, that fulfills that vacuum. It replaces that vacuum with a reality, with an experience of your own self. Because what you are is very beautiful. We need to learn to live with ourselves. When we can’t learn to live with ourselves, we can’t live with anybody. The world is too small.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Hayward, California, USA, March 1, 1985
1980s

World, Beauty, Reality

“The discontinuation of bodily exercises afforded a proportionable quantity of leisure time for the cultivation of the mind; so that the manners of mankind were softened by degrees, and learning, which had been so long neglected, became fashionable, and was esteemed an indispensable mark of a polite education.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. xxxii
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Education

Education, Exercises, Fashion, Time

“At the end of the day, the American people are going to be faced with some very tough judgments, because, at the current course this president is pursuing, I'm afraid that the next president will inherit this situation, with all of its complexity and all of its heartbreak… And let's not kid ourselves. I think this administration is also focused on Iran. And I think we need to send a very strong message that an administration with its track record of failure, of arrogance, of refusal to listen and learn from the disastrous steps that have, unfortunately, been taken should not be rushing off and putting American servicemembers in harm's way and possibly widening the conflict.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Interview with Gwen Ifill on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (18 January 2007) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june07/clinton_01-18.html Senate years (2001 – January 19, 2007)

People, Way, Failure, Thinking

“Today's Real Man is probably closest to Spencer Tracy or Gary Cooper in spirit; he realizes that while birds, flowers, poetry, and small children do not add to the quality of life in quite the same manner as a Super Bowl and six-pack of Budweiser, he's learned to appreciate them anyway.”

Bruce Feirstein book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche

Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, ch. 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=VKuGe7aiswcC&q=%22Today's+Real+Man+is+probably+closest+to+Spencer+Tracy+or+Gary+Cooper+in+spirit+he+realizes+that+while+birds+flowers+poetry+and+small+children+do+not+add+to+the+quality+of+life+in+quite+the+same+manner+as+a+Super+Bowl+and+six-pack+of+Budweiser+he's+learned+to+appreciate+them+anyway%22&pg=PA18#v=onepage

Life, Children, Flowers, Bird

“On the ice flow they grip,
cut, twist, break open seeds
throwing out the white salt,
revive volcanic dreams:
unable to satisfy
their diminuated lust
the allegoric flesh
learns the thrill of return.”

John Carder Bush (1944) British artist; brother of Kate Bush

The Creation Edda (1970)

Dreams

“If the Settlement seeks its expression through social activity, it must learn the difference between mere social unrest and spiritual impulse.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

Source: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), Ch. 9

“Science, especially evolutionary sciences, can only proceed from learning about theories of hypotheses that do not stand the test of time.”

Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948) American anthropologist

Preface
What the Bones Tell Us (1997)

Science, Time

“Most American men of affairs have learned well the rhetoric of public relations, in some cases even to the point of using it when they are alone, and thus coming to believe it.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

Source: The Power Elite (1956), p. 5.

Men

“in the learned professions as in the unlearned, and in human things throughout, in every place and in every time, the true function of intellect is not that of talking, but of understanding and discerning with a view to performing!”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Understanding, Time

“Arie de Geus is a former executive with Royal Dutch/Shell who, together with Peter M. Senge, is responsible for the development of the concept of the ‘learning organisation’. In the early 1990s it was Senge, through his best-selling book The Fifth Discipline (1990), who did most to disseminate and popularise the concept. More recently, however, de Geus has produced an important body of writing in his own right, notably The Living Company (1997), in which he takes an organic and holistic view of organisations and closely links their ability to learn with the extent to which they are integrated into their environment.”

Morgen Witzel (1960) Canadian historian, business theorist

Source: Fifty key figures in management, 2004, p. 55

Books

“And still, the more he learned, the more he became aware that he did not know.”

Laura Anne Gilman book Flesh and Fire

Source: Flesh and Fire (2009), p. 313

“There are several generations of Silicon Valley CEOs who "pay-it-forward." It’s an understood, underground thing you don’t talk about. You give back to younger founders and entrepreneurs without asking for anything. The goal is to pass on what we learned to make our startup ecosystem better.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

“I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"The First Morning", p. 7
Desert Solitaire (1968)

World, Communication, Idea, Bird

“The grateful savants had accepted, and they were spending the rest of their lives reading fifteenth-hand opinions, taking pleasant naps, and drooling out to yawning students the anemic and wordy bookishness which they called learning.”

Sinclair Lewis book Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry (1927)

Reading

“If news organizations learned anything after the campaign, they should have learned that groupthink has a tendency to miss the point and journalistic myopia requires some extra-strength corrective lenses. Do something different. Represent the interests of a broader, more ideologically diverse population. Figure out what they’re thinking and feeling — and why.”

Margaret Sullivan (journalist) American journalist

Journalists in the age of Trump: Lose the smugness, keep the mission. (November 29, 2016)

Feeling, Thinking

“We do not see rightly until we learn to eliminate what we expect or wish to see from what we really see.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 244

“It's tough when you started out as young as I did to look back and see how far I've come. I try to be easy on myself and go 'Look man, you were younger, you were learning; you learn, you grow.' But I'm not my best judge. I always feel like my best work is still ahead of me.”

Matt Dillon (1964) American actor

Duane Dudek (October 12, 1995) "The Development of an Actor", Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, p. 1.

Feeling

“"Mulla, Mulla, my son has written from the Abode of Learning to say that he has completely finished his studies!"
"Console yourself, madam, with the thought that God will no doubt send him more."”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Idries Shah, The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin (1973), , p. 134

God, Study

“What is my personal strategy for the next 10 hours? Who can I talk with or what can I volunteer for to learn something new?”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Source: Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote, February 4, 2013.

Personality

“According to Luther everyone judges everyone. This is because there's an intense desire to be judging. Then those of us on the masochistic side of things want to be judged. Thus we publish. We teach. We learn. We beg to be judged and decimated.”

Avital Ronell (1952) American philosopher

"Kafka's Before the Law: The Law of the Father http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifz0m9PBD9E" (2011) 15:16

“Consider the honey-bee. Its treasure is nectar, obtained even from the chilly plant. It is not at the cost of the flower. In fact, its act of extracting honey contributes to the progress of the flowers. You need not learn from Kahlil Gibran, Marx or Gorbachev, not even from Gandhiji. Choose instead to learn your lesson from the honey bees as your silent partners: they will show you how to develop without destroying.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

On Community living
Baba Amte's Words of Wisdom

Flowers, Bee

“Some of the captured women killed themselves. I didn’t. others yielded and learned to love their captors. I wouldn’t do either one. I knew I would escape. Death is forever; to learn to love the hand that crushes you is a shame not to be borne. Pain and slavery will pass. I believed this and it kept me alive”

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Devoted

Love, Death, Women, Pain

“[I was] a youth in his twenty third year, young of his age, who had seen little or nothing of the world, who resigned himself to politics, but whose desire had been for the ministry of God. The remains of this desire operated unfortunately. They made me tend to glorify in an extravagant manner and degree not only the religious character of the State, which in reality stood low, but also the religious mission of the Conservative party. There was, to my eyes, a certain element of AntiChrist in the Reform Act and that Act was cordially hated. … It was only under the (second) Government of Sir Robert Peel that I learned how impotent [and] barren was the conservative office for the Church.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

'My Earlier Political Opinions. (II) The Extrication' (16 July 1892), quoted in John Brooke and Mary Sorensen (eds.), The Prime Minister's Papers: W. E. Gladstone. I: Autobiographica (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1971), p. 40.
1890s

God, Hate, Youth, Age

“I don't mind a good fight. For reasons known only to God, I've had quite a few tough ones in my life. But I learned an important lesson along the way: In the end, it matters less that you can fight. What you fight for is the real test.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

Life, God, Way, Fight

“Learn sciences which offer you both your corrective destinies and corrective threats.”

Musa al-Kadhim (745–799) Seventh of the Twelve Imams and regarded by Sunnis as a renowned scholar

al-Nuri, Mustadrak al‑Wasā'il, vol.12, pg.166.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

Science

“117: It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and, learning to be self-critical?”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

Children, Education

“In the beginning, at least for academics, there was philosophy. All of learned inquiry occurred within the discipline of philosophy and was carried out by philosophers. We retain the vestiges of this organization in our practice of awarding a single advanced academic degree, the Ph. D. or Doctor of Philosophy.’ As our understanding of the world around us grew, however, various areas of philosophy became sufficiently well understood to graduate into their own disciplines. Mathematics and the physical and biological sciences were the first to appear, followed more recently by the social sciences. Emerging as its own discipline is only the first step toward becoming a mature field of study. Economics is unique among the social sciences for the number of remaining steps it has taken. Unlike many social sciences, economics has a well-defined core set of methods. The first year graduate program in economics is virtually indistinguishable across American universities, consisting of microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics. As a result, economics can be easily defined by its tools of inquiry as by the target of its inquiry.”

Larry Samuelson (1953) American economist

Larry Samuelson. "Bounded Rationality and Game Theory", The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Vol. 36, Special Issue, 1996, pages 17-35.

World, Mathematics, Understanding, Study

“It may remain for us to learn … that our task is only beginning; and that there will never be given to us even the ghost of any help, save the help of unutterable unthinkable Time. We may have to learn that the infinite whirl of death and birth, out of which we cannot escape, is of our own creation, of our own seeking;—that the forces integrating worlds are the errors of the Past;—that the eternal sorrow is but the eternal hunger of insatiable desire;—and that the burnt-out suns are rekindled only by the inextinguishable passions of vanished lives.”

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) writer

Source: Out of the East, pp. 156–7.

Death, Hunger, World, Error

“Probability is the mathematics of uncertainty. …many modern theories have uncertainty built into their foundations. Thus learning to think in terms of probability is essential.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

Mathematics, Thinking

“It is what we think we know that keeps us from learning.”

Chester Barnard (1886–1961) American businessman

Attributed to Chester Bernard in: Brand, Richard A. "Hypothesis-based research." Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy 28.2 (1998): 71-73.

Thinking

“Preachers are not sermon makers, but men makers and saint makers, and he only is well-trained for this business who has made himself a man and a saint. It is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God - men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it. These can mold a generation for God.”

Edward McKendree Bounds (1835–1913) clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church South

Power Through Prayer.

Love, Men, God, Faith

“He didn't want to learn another thing. Motionless, he constantly stared at the same spot, unseeing. He breathed as if the air were loam. …he no longer wanted to be quick. …he wanted to slow down until he died. …Outside the passage of time… until they'd think him dead. …The alterations of day and night would finally become just a flickering… John sucked in the air and held his breath. …everything would be as it had been before his birth. He would have never been.”

Sten Nadolny book The Discovery of Slowness

The Discovery of Slowness (1983, 1987)

Birth, Thinking, Time, Night

“There are definitely flaws in my nature and mistakes have been made, but I have observed that the more I have engaged with the transcendent, the more I have explored practices that are designed to alleviate the burden of materialism and individualism, the greater access I have to a feeling of serenity and freedom, the more I enjoy my work, the more I feel free. I think those techniques will work for anyone. I believe the techniques I have been taught to live drug-free, the methods I have used to improve my work and relationships, will work for anyone who uses them and will release anyone from any behavior or pattern that impedes happiness—not just obvious stuff like drug addiction, but less-obvious stuff like food addiction, spending addiction, or caring-too-much-what-other-people-think-of-you addiction. The stuff I learned in order to make me better at my job has taught me that my job doesn’t matter, that no individual job matters when compared to our common good. When we as individuals collectively access this frequency, we will realize that we have a shared destiny and that we can design a fair and rational system that does what it’s supposed to do: enhances the whole and respects the individual.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Happiness, People, Food, Behavior

“In separateness only does love learn definition.”

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

Revelation

Love

“Once launched into some activity, conceiving of himself as an instrument of God’s will, the ascetic did not stop to ask about the meaning of it all. On the contrary, the more furious his activity, the more the problem of what his activity meant receded from his mind. … To meet the demands of the day was as near as one could come to doing the pious thing, in this—God’s—world. To trouble about meaning was really an impiety and, of course, frivolous, because futile. For the question of meaning, therefore, neither the ascetic nor the therapeutic type feels responsible, if his spiritual discipline has been successful. The recently fashionable religious talk of “ultimate concern” makes no sense either in the ascetic or in the therapeutic mode. To try to relate “ultimate concern” to everyday behavior would be exhausting and nerve-shattering work; indeed, it could effectively inhibit less grandiose kinds of work. Neither the ascetic nor the therapeutic bothers his head about “ultimate concern.” Such a concern is for mystics who cannot otherwise enjoy their leisure. In the workaday world, there are no ultimate concerns, only present ones. Therapy is the respite of every day, during which the importance of the present is learned, and the existence of what in the ascetic tradition came to be called the “ultimate” or “divine” is unlearned.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

God, World, Behavior, Feeling

“Every employee in an undertaking, then, takes a larger or smaller share in the work of administration, and has, therefore, to use and display his administrative faculties. This is why we often see men, who are specially gifted, gradually rise from the lowest to the highest level of the industrial hierarchy, although they have only had an elementary education. But young men, who begin practical work as engineers soon after leaving industrial schools, are in a particularly good position both for learning administration and for showing their ability in this direction, for in administration, as in all other branches of industrial activity, a man’s work is judged by its results.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 908

Men, Education, School

“He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

G 8
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

Men

“The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I "The Education of the Architect" Sec. 1

Art, Knowledge, Study

“And so I say to you today, my friends, that you may be able to speak with the tongues of men and angels; you may have the eloquence of articulate speech; but if you have not love, it means nothing. Yes, you may have the gift of prophecy; you may have the gift of scientific prediction and understand the behavior of molecules; you may break into the storehouse of nature and bring forth many new insights; yes, you may ascend to the heights of academic achievement so that you have all knowledge; and you may boast of your great institutions of learning and the boundless extent of your degrees; but if you have not love, all of these mean absolutely nothing. You may even give your goods to feed the poor; you may bestow great gifts to charity; and you may tower high in philanthropy; but if you have not love, your charity means nothing. You may even give your body to be burned and die the death of a martyr, and your spilt blood may be a symbol of honor for generations yet unborn, and thousands may praise you as one of history's greatest heroes; but if you have not love, your blood was spilt in vain. What I'm trying to get you to see this morning is that a man may be self-centered in his self-denial and self-righteous in his self-sacrifice. His generosity may feed his ego, and his piety may feed his pride. So without love, benevolence becomes egotism, and martyrdom becomes spiritual pride.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

Love, Death, Men, Angels

“One day, when Nietzsche was telling his friend Deussen that it was not abrogation of the will nor extinction of the passions he aimed at, but their ennobling, his friend, a learned man, fast in the trammels of Christian doctrine, answered—not without some justice—that the only means of ennoblement was abrogation and extinction. Nietzsche had a difficult position to maintain; for what he wished to ennoble was no longer there.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

pp 48-49.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

Justice, Passion

“Present party designations have become empty of all contents…Vastly extended State expenditure, vastly increased demands from the taxpayer who has to provide the money, social reform regardless of expense, cash exacted from the taxpayer already at his wits' end—when were the problems of plus and minus more desperate? How are we to measure the use and abuse of industrial organization? Powerful orators find "Liberty" the true keyword, but the I remember hearing from a learned student that of "liberty" he knew well over two hundred definitions. Can we be sure that the "haves" and the "have-nots" will agree in their selection of the right one? We can only trust to the growth of responsibility; we may look to circumstances and events to teach their lesson.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Letter to Sir Francis Webster, president of the Montrose Burghs Liberal Association, quoted in 'Lord Morley On Modern Politics', The Times (11 May 1923), p. 12.

Money, Problem

“The plumber plodded along in silence, like a man who has learned to be polite to lunatics through dealing with civil engineers.”

Lindsey Davis book Shadows in Bronze

Shadows in Bronze

Silence

“Kindness has converted more sinners than either zeal, eloquence, or learning.”

Frederick William Faber (1814–1863) British hymn writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 363.

“Did you know that you could be wrong
And swear you’re right?
Some people been known to do it
All their lives.
But you find yourself alone
Just like you found yourself before.
Like I found myself in pieces
On the hotel floor.
Hard times help me see.I’m a good man with a good heart;
Had a tough time, got a rough start.
But I finally learned to let it go,
Now I’m right here, and I’m right now.
And I’m hoping, knowing somehow
That my shadow days are over.
My shadow days are over now.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Shadow Days
Song lyrics, Born and Raised (2012)

People, Hope, Time, Help

“The respondents in this case insist that a difficult question of public policy must be taken from the reach of the voters, and thus removed from the realm of public discussion, dialogue, and debate in an election campaign. Quite in addition to the serious First Amendment implications of that position with respect to any particular election, it is inconsistent with the underlying premises of a responsible, functioning democracy. One of those premises is that a democracy has the capacity—and the duty—to learn from its past mistakes; to discover and confront persisting biases; and by respectful, rationale deliberation to rise above those flaws and injustices. That process is impeded, not advanced, by court decrees based on the proposition that the public cannot have the requisite repose to discuss certain issues. It is demeaning to the democratic process to presume that the voters are not capable of deciding an issue of this sensitivity on decent and rational grounds. The process of public discourse and political debate should not be foreclosed even if there is a risk that during a public campaign there will be those, on both sides, who seek to use racial division and discord to their own political advantage. An informed public can, and must, rise above this. The idea of democracy is that it can, and must, mature. Freedom embraces the right, indeed the duty, to engage in a rational, civic discourse in order to determine how best to form a consensus to shape the destiny of the Nation and its people.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, 572 U. S. ____, (2016), plurality opinion.

People, Democracy, Idea, Question

“There is perhaps no truer sign that a man is really advancing than that he is learning to forget himself, that he is losing the natural thoughts about self in the thought of One higher than himself, to whose guidance he can commit himself and all men.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 565.

Men, Nature, Forgetting

“Aaron began to learn the Dakota language. Isaac, like a newly ordained Doctor of Philosophy, after years of being nagged into learning, rejoiced to be invited to stand up and look important and teach. He was astonished by his own erudition and by the fact that his class of one did not walk out.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 31

“The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

"Reasons to De-Test the Schools," New York Times (1988-10-11), later published in Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (1991)

Truth

“Let them learn first to show pity at home.”

John Fletcher Wit Without Money

Scene 2.
Wit Without Money (c. 1614; published 1639)

Home

“We all would like to know more and, at the same time, to receive less information. In fact, the problem of a worker in today's knowledge industry is not the scarcity of information but its excess. The same holds for professionals: just think of a physician or an executive, constantly bombarded by information that is at best irrelevant. In order to learn anything we need time. And to make time we must use information filters allowing us to ignore most of the information aimed at us. We must ignore much to learn a little.”

Mario Bunge (1919) Argentine philosopher and physicist

Mario Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis: The Need for Reconstruction, 2001, p. 20.
2000s

Knowledge, Problem, Thinking, Time

“The only thing Carla has ever learned to like about dealing with power is how easy it is to embarrass people who have it.”

John Barnes book Mother of Storms

Source: Mother of Storms (1994), p. 261

People

“Christianity possesses the great advantage over Judaism of being represented as coming from the mouth of the first Teacher not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself, without historical learning, to be spread at all times and among all peoples with the greatest trustworthiness.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a learned religion”
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

People, Religion, Teachers, Time

“It is supposed that there has been progress in the science of textual criticism, and the most frivolous pretender has learned to talk superciliously about "the old unscientific days". The old unscientific days are everlasting; they are here and now; they are renewed perennially by the ear which takes formulas in, and the tongue which gives them out again, and the mind which meanwhile is empty of reflexion and stuffed with self-complacency.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

Science

“Awake! Arise! Go and learn from the wise! Become brave karma-yogis of the Lord!”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

20 April 1983.
The Teachings of Babaji

“I respect the decision of the Court as everyone else should, whether they agree with or not. Respect for the rule of law demands nothing less. I don't think the statements of President (Rodrigo) Duterte has anything to do with it as I believe in the independence of the Court. I cannot comment on the prosecution given that I am not too learned about the day to day arguments both sides made before the Court.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2016, July 20). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10154259973445610/ 2016, Facebook

Law, Thinking, Decision

“I shall remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace; walking until given shelter and fasting until given food.”

Peace Pilgrim (1908–1981) American non-denominational spiritual teacher

Personal vow with which she began her peace pilgramage (1 January 1953), later published in Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1982)

Peace, Food, Way

“A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon; (i. e.) those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass; and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 3:381 (27 June 1839)
1830s

God, Feeling, Intelligence, Idea

“Government — they used to teach it in college. It's actually something you should study and learn and know how to do. The Republicans always run on the idea that government isn't very effective. Well, not the way you do it. But it can be effective.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

As quoted in "Real talk with Bill Maher" by Joan Walsh at Salon.com (16 February 2007) http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/int/2007/02/16/maher/index2.html

Way, Idea, Study

“We learn the most from fools … yet we pay them back with the worst ingratitude.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 85

Fools

“Arakawa: The manga artist that I look up to the most is Suiho Tagawa, the author of Norakuro. He is the root of my style as an artist. I also love Rumiko Takahashi and Kinnikuman or Ultimate Muscle by Yudetamago. As far as composition and how to draw, I learned that when I was apprenticed to Hiroyuki Eto, the author of Mahoujin Guru Guru for Shonen GanGan.”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Love, Drawing

“[written when news was received that a vast French invasion fleet had appeared off the south coast of England ] MA CHERE AMIE, … I awake to fears of invasion, to noise, faction, drums, soldiers, and care the whole town has now but two employments - the learning of French, and the exercise of arms - which is highly political, in my poor opinion, for should the military fail of success, which is not impossible- why, the ladies must take the field, and scold them to their ships again.”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 32: 25 Aug 1779, to Mrs C___ ).

Fear, Exercises, Appearance, Success

“We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past. We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments. … Our goal is stability, not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country. It's time.”

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

2010s, 2016, December Source: Speaking at U.S. Bank Arena, as reported by Washington Examiner, December 1, 2016 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trumps-new-foreign-policy-we-will-stop-looking-to-topple-regimes/article/2608687

Time, Past, Country

“Also in this same Shewing where I saw that I should sin, there was I learned to be in dread for unsureness of myself. For I wot not how I shall fall, nor I know not the measure nor the greatness of sin; for that would I have wist, with dread, and thereto I had none answer.
Also our courteous Lord in the same time He shewed full surely and mightily the endlessness and the unchangeability of His love; and, afterward, that by His great goodness and His grace inwardly keeping, the love of Him and our soul shall never be disparted in two, without end.
And thus in this dread I have matter of meekness that saveth me from presumption, and in the blessed Shewing of Love I have matter of true comfort and of joy that saveth me from despair.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 79

Love, Soul, Time, Joy

“Perhaps it is true that the trials of life always teach us something, but it is undeniable that we are not always so eager to learn.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

Life

“…a clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces that tend to divide people up inside their country are unbelievably counterproductive. In other words, people came from other countries — I guess you'd call them colonialists — and they pitted one group of people against another.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Press Availability with President Kagame of Rwanda (February 19, 2008) http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/02/20080219-6.html http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/20/bush-outside-forces-tend-to-divide-people-up 2000s, 2008

People, Country

“In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters. Enslaved Africans heard the ringing promises of the Declaration of Independence and asked the self-evident question, 'Then why not me?' In the era of America's founding, a man named Olaudah Equiano was taken in bondage to the New World. He witnessed all of slavery's cruelties, the ruthless and the petty. He also saw beyond the slave-holding piety of a time to a higher standard of humanity.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (July 2003)

World, Question, Freedom, Suffering

“The man must learn to know his dog as a personality, not a formula. I have no objection to a grouse dog swinging on his cast and coming in from behind me – a misdemeanor by trial standards. Grouse terrain is such that if it can best be covered by the dog’s working in an unorthodox manner, I consider him intelligent if he does so.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

Troubles with Bird Dogs (1975)

Dogs, Intelligence, Personality

“I like to learn things slow
I like learning alot
I like to get it all again and in the end
You know you get what you got”

Zooey Deschanel (1980) American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter

"Lingering Still".
Volume Two (2010)

“Learning should be a pleasure, and children should grow up to imagine wisdom with a smiling face, not a fierce and terrifying one.”

Sarah Bakewell book How to Live

describing Montaigne’s view, p. 57.
How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in one Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010)

Wisdom, Children, Pleasure, Smile

“For this dead Venice once taught us to be merchants, sailors and gentlemen; and this dying England taught the Americans all they have of speech, or thought, hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking birds.”

John Ruskin book Fors Clavigera

Fors Clavigera,, letter xlii, ( 1 June 1874 https://archive.org/stream/forsclavigera02ruskiala#page/204/mode/2up; quoted by William Archer in America To-Day). Fors Clavigera (1871-1878 and 1880-1884)

Bird, Dead

Quotes about learning page 41

Quotes about learning
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