Quotes about learning
page 49

“As we have learned from ObamaCare, young people are not considered adults until age 26, at which point they are finally forced to get off their parents' health care plans. The old motto was "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote." The new motto is: "Not old enough to buy your own health insurance, not old enough to vote."”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Repeal the 26th Amendment!" (10 November 2010) http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=395. 2010

People, Health, Age, Parent

“I'm learning to fly,
But I ain't got wings.
Coming down
Is the hardest thing.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Learning to Fly, written with Jeff Lynne
Lyrics, Into The Great Wide Open (1991)

Flying

“In introducing the personal computer to the classroom, we shall be breaking a four-hundred year-old truce between the gregariousness and openness fostered by orality and the introspection and isolation fostered by the printed word. Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility… Print stresses individualized learning, competition, and personal autonomy. Over four centuries, teachers, while emphasizing print, have allowed orality its place in the classroom, and have therefore achieved a kind of pedagogical peace between these two forms of learning, so that what is valuable in each can be maximized. Now comes the computer, carrying anew the banner of private learning and individual problem-solving. Will the widespread use of computers in the classroom defeat once and for all the claims of communal speech? Will the computer raise egocentrism to the status of a virtue?”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)

Peace, Communication, Problem, Sense

“Imagine that for hundreds of years your most formative traumas, your daily suffering and pain, the abuse you live through, the terror you live with, are unspeakable — not the basis of literature. You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs.… You learn how to leave your body and create someone else who takes over when you cannot stand it any more. You develop a self who is ingratiating and obsequious and imitative and aggressively passive and silent — you learn, in a word, femininity.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon book Only Words

Source: Only Words (1993), pp. 3-7

Pain, Imagination, Literature, Suffering

“Those upon the teaching ray will learn to teach by teaching. There is no surer method, provided it is accompanied by a deep love, personal yet at the same time impersonal, for those who are to be taught. Above everything else, I would enjoin upon you the inculcation of the group spirit, for that is the first expression of true love.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Education in the New Age (1954) p. 14

Love, Time, Personality

“He was a learned man, of immense reading, but is much blamed for his unfaithfull quotations.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"William Prynne"
Brief Lives

Reading

“The simplest way that I can understand therapy is that we're born a certain way, we're taught to be something different, and we spend our whole lives trying to unravel it and ultimately align ourselves with who we really are. Life, experiences, traumas -- whatever -- they all add up to make you some altered version of what you are. So there's this battle that goes on between what you are and what you become, and it's been very important for me to unravel what I was taught to be or what I became. and to draw a direct parallel to music -- the closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets, because I think what talent I do have is connected to that person, it's not a manipulative process, it's intuitive. You can learn about chords and guitars, but there's a piece of you that makes it individual, and it's been a slow process for me to become whatever it is that I'm supposed to be.”

Billy Corgan (1967) American musician, songwriter, producer, and author

Smashing Pumpkins (1996)

Life, Music, Way, Understanding

“A man spends the first year of his life learning that he ends at his own skin, and the rest of his life learning that he doesn't.”

Saul Gorn (1912–1992) computer scientist

"The Individual and Political Life of Information Systems", in Heilprin, Markuson, and Goodman, ed., Proceedings of the Symposium on Education for Information Science, Warrenton, Virginia, September 7-10, 1965 (Washington, DC: Spartan Books, 1965)

Life

“I knew the Classics, but disliked them. What I enjoyed were the romances of Old China, and especially stories of rebellions. I read the Yo Fei Chuan, Shui Hu Chuan, Fan T'ang, San Kuo, and Hsi Yu Chi, while still very young, and despite the vigilance of my old teacher, who hated these outlawed books and called them wicked. I used to read them in school, covering them up with a Classic when the teacher walked past. So also did most of my schoolmates. We learned many of the stories almost by heart, and discussed and re-discussed them many times. We knew more of them than the old men of the village, who also loved them and used to exchange stories with us. I believe that perhaps I was much influenced by such books, read at an impressionable age.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

In Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China (1937)

Love, Men, Hate, Books

“In the years when I was trying to get my work shown and accepted and so forth, I went to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad and that was my formal art school. You can learn a hell of a lot about sculpture, working in a railroad. The thing about getting a job outside of art is the fact that you can finds out whole areas of materials. I don't mean new ones. I mean old ones like scrap iron. A railroad is essentially a big collection of scrap iron, and that’s why it's great. You get out and beyond the art confine.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 27

School, Art, Hell

“We are carrying into the next decade many unresolved problems raised by Vietnam. How can a democracy such as ours defend its interests at acceptable cost and continue to enjoy the freedom of speech and behavior to which we are accustomed in time of peace? To a Communist enemy the Cold War is a total, unending conflict with the United States and its allies- without formal military hostilities, to be sure- but conducted with the same discipline and determination as a formal war. Unless we can learn to exercise some degree of self-discipline, to accept and enforce some reasonable standard of responsible civic conduct, and to remove the many self-created obstacles to the use of our power, we will be unable to meet the hard competition waiting for us in the decade of the 1970s.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 408

Hostility, War, Peace, Behavior

“Noting all these things with the great delight which learning gives, we cannot but be stirred by these discoveries when we reflect upon the influence of them one by one.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 14
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book IX

“If those kids had been carrying guns they would have gunned down this one gunman. … Don't pray. Learn to use guns.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

On Heath High School shooting where a teenaged gunman killed 3 students at a prayer meeting at the school, on Politically Incorrect (18 December 1997).
1980s-90s

“The rare individual who has learned to govern himself is too fed up with the labor of it to want to govern anybody else.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 94

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Sections I–II, p. 11–12
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter II. The Science of Justice (Continued)

Men, Pleasure, World, Justice

“We still remain prone to doctrines, philosophies, faiths, and beliefs that spread through the populations of entire civilizations. It is hard to imagine any foolproof ways to protect ourselves from such infections. …the best we can do is to try to educate our children to learn more skills of critical thinking and methods of scientific verification.”

Marvin Minsky book The Emotion Machine

The Emotion Machine (2006)

Children, Education, Faith, Way

“Man is the animal with a soul who thinks and builds; his penetrating insights into the laws of nature are there for any child to learn, and his impressive mastery of the materials of the earth stands ready to be imitated by anyone, but the home he has built for his own kind is still a lonely and impoverished place for many people. There is nothing about that loneliness that wisdom cannot change; there is nothing in that poverty that strength cannot overcome. Separated from each other, the thinker is a stranger in his own house, and the builder is a beggar at his own door. Together, they can bring the warmth of love and the helpfulness of power into the daily market place of living, taking a human position that is eternal and without compromise. In the midst of the obvious and the commonplace, and only in this birthplace of human contentment and happiness, the thinker and builder can leave the monastic cell and relinquish barracks mobility to claim the world in the name of human beings. When they do so, man can expect a human harvest equal to his dreams, and measured to the nobility of his posture.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

Psychoanalysis and Civilization

Love, Wisdom, Happiness, People

“It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

20 July 1848
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

History, Universe

“I always think coming from that background probably has always made me a better person as a candidate and probably was one of the reasons that I got elected to the second-highest office in the state — because of those values I learned as a kid in that small town and that small school. Knowing what it meant to respect one another and maintain that throughout my life. I hope someday, when politics are over, someone says, “You know, Mike Parson was a good statesman.” I always say the difference between a politician and a statesman: a politician is always worried about themselves and the next election. And you see that happen a lot. But I think statesmen are truly the ones who worry about the next generation.”

Mike Parson (1955) American politician

Q&A Interview with Mo. Lt. Gov. Mike Parson https://www.wordandway.org/item/3729-q-a-interview-with-mo-lt-gov-mike-parson (May 11, 2017)

Life, School, Hope, Thinking

“The first object of any act of learning, over and beyond the pleasure it may give, is that it should serve us in the future. Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily.”

Ted Sizer (1932–2009) American education reformer

Source: Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (1984), p. 95.

Pleasure, Future

“The other major impression to emerge from Magick Without Tears is that -- as odd as it sounds -- one of Crowley's chief drawbacks was his sense of humour. This is a disability he shares with Bernard Shaw: both were driven by a strange compulsion to be flippant. But when he becomes absorbed in an idea, Shaw can remain serious for a sufficiently long time to convince the reader of his intellectual stature. In Crowley, the flippancy has the tone of a schoolmaster trying to be funny for the benefit of the sixth form, or a muscular Christian trying to convince you that he isn't really religious. 'How can a yogi ever feel worried?... That question I have been expecting for a very long time!' (Crowley has never learned that exclamation marks give the impression of a gushing schoolgirl.) 'And what you expect is to see my middle stump break the wicket-keeper's nose, with the balls smartly fielded by Third Man and Short Leg!' It makes us aware that there was something wrong with Crowley's 'self-image.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

He is one of those people who, no matter how hard they try, never feel quite grown up.
Source: Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987), p. 150

People, Feeling, Idea, Question

“The Chinese language lacked terms capable of conveying Buddhist meanings; and not until the fifth century did a handful of scholars become sufficiently at home in both Chinese and Indian learning to be able to translate Buddhist texts into Chinese with a modicum of adequacy. …the novel and initially alien outlook of the Indian faith had somehow to come to terms with the various strands already woven into Chinese culture, ranging… from Confucian and Taoist learning to local sub-literate peasant magic. …while accommodating themselves to older Chinese expectations, Buddhist doctrines and practices simultaneously widened and redefined traditional Chinese sensibilities and aspirations.”

William H. McNeill book The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963)

Faith, Home

“The great voice of America does not come from the seats of learning, but in a murmur from the hills and the woods and the farms and the factories and the mills, rolling on and gaining volume until it comes to us the voice from the homes of the common men. Do these murmurs come into the corridors of the university? I have not heard them.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Address to Princeton University alumni, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (April 17, 1910); reported in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur S. Link (1975), vol. 20, p. 365
1910s

Men, Home, Universe

“It's really important for me to get across to our fans that whenever I put myself in different circumstances. It is to learn from it so I can relay it to others.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

As quoted in Circus (January 1997).
1990s

“[Danny] laughed once and said, 'That man is such an ignoramus, Father.' I was angry. 'Look into his soul,' I said. 'Stand inside his soul and see the world through his eyes. You will know the pain he feels because of his ignorance, and you will not laugh.' He was bewildered and hurt. The nightmares he began to have…. But he learned to find answers for himself. He suffered and learned to listen to the suffering of others. In the silence between us, he began to hear the world crying.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

Reb Saunders to Reuven Malter when talking about when Daniel was younger (p. 286)
The Chosen (1967)

Pain, World, Feeling, Soul

“Well, Milo learned HIS lesson. Pederasty acceptable only for refugees and illegals. Then libs will support you.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Ann Coulter accuses refugees and illegal immigrants of paedophilia in wake of Milo Yiannopoulos scandal
2017-02-21
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ann-coulter-milo-yiannopoulos-refugees-illegal-immigrants-pederasty-twitter-boys-pedophiles-cpac-a7591496.html
2017

Support

“As soon as I learned about this miracle of chip making I thought, what is the key missing element? … I'd been working on software so I decided that maybe that was what was necessary to bring all this power to life. I talked about that with a friend, Paul Allen, and we kept saying, "What can we do? Can we start our own software company?" It seemed impossible at the time because software was not done by independent companies. The companies that built the computers — IBM and DEC — they did all the software. And when we called them up and said, "We would like to do an operating system," they said, "who are you?" to which we said, "we're high-school students."”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

That was s, uh — that was the end of that conversation. Speech to the Economic Club of Detroit (1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzX6UUJ461s 1990s

Life, School, Time

“But when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy;
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

Remembrance (1846)

Dreams, Joy, Despair

“I put everything I had into it — all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.”

Gregory Peck (1916–2003) American actor

On his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, in a 1989 CNN interview, quoted in "Oscar-winner Gregory Peck dies at age 87" in USA Today (12 June 2003) http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-06-12-peck-obit_x.htm

Life, Children, Family, Justice

“I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the Bitchun Society, to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies; to realize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to see the death of the workplace and of work.”

Cory Doctorow book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

First lines
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003)

Death, World, Dreams

“Our great-grand-children, when they learn how we began this war by snatching glory out of defeat, and then swept on to victory, may also learn how the little holiday steamers made an excursion to hell and came back glorious.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

"Postscript to the News", broadcast on BBC radio, June 5, 1940; published in The Listener, June 13, 1940.

War, Children, Hell, Holiday

“I make sure that they photograph everything they do. And they have to have a portfolio to graduate. You know, there’s no formula for success out there, but what works is: learn how [to photograph], photograph everything you do and you put those photographs in front of people that can help hire you. That works.”

Tom Savini (1946) American actor, stuntman, director and makeup artist

People, Success, Help

“I'm a great believer in asking everyone for an opinion before I make a decision. … I ask and I ask and I ask, until I begin to get a gut feeling about something. And that's when I make a decision. I have learned much more from conducting my own random surveys than I could ever have learned from the greatest of consulting firms.”

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

Source: 1980s, Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987), pp. 51–52

Feeling, Decision

“[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. …The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

In response to not knowing the speed of sound as included in the Edison Test: New York Times (18 May 1921); Einstein: His Life and Times (1947) Philipp Frank, p. 185; Einstein, A Life (1996) by Denis Brian, p. 129; "Einstein Due Today" (February 2005) edited by József Illy, Manuscript 25-32 of the Einstein Paper Project; all previous sources as per Einstein His Life and Universe (2007) by Walter Isaacson, p. 299 Unsourced variants: "I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book" and "Never memorize what you can look up in books." (The second version is found in "Recording the Experience" (10 June 2004) at The Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/world-record.html, but no citation to Einstein's writings is given). 1920s

Books, Education, Thinking, Training

“My mother, a woman, told me this, and I’ll tell you, mijo, that you will learn who you are and who you aren’t in the next four or five years, because not to learn who you are and who you aren’t in the next few years, my mother said, is to be missing the most important part of your whole life.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Life, Parting

“…in various types of organisms, from snails to flies to mice to people. …learning and memory, as well as synaptic and neuronal plasticity, represent a family of processes that share a common logic and some key components but vary in the details of their molecular mechanisms.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

People, Family, Memory

“To unravel the workings of these embodied, embedded, and sometimes extended minds requires an unusual mix of neuroscience, computational, dynamical, and information-theoretic understandings, “brute” physiology, ecological sensitivity, and attention to the stacked designer cocoons in which we grow, work, think, and act. This may seem a daunting prospect, but there is cause for optimism. In learning, development, and evolution, trade-offs among neural control, bodily morphology, action, and the canny use of environmental resources and opportunities are regularly and reliably achieved.”

Andy Clark (1957) philosopoher

Source: Supersizing the Mind (2008), Ch. 10. Conclusions: Mind as Mashup

Optimism, Understanding, Thinking

“The U. S. government needs to learn from successful private businesses that run an effective and efficient operation in serving their customers and outwitting their competitors.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Business, Success

“Numbers were a mystery to me. I was so far behind. It was only in Nairobi, at age ten, that I figured out anything at all about the way time is calculated: minutes, hours, years. In Saudi Arabia the calendar had been Islamic, based on lunar months; Ethiopia maintained an ancient solar calendar. The year was written 1399 in Saudi Arabia, 1972 in Ethiopia, and 1980 in Kenya and everywhere else. In Ethiopia we even had a different clock: sunrise was called one o'clock and noon was called six. (Even within Kenya, people used two systems for telling time, the British and the Swahili.) The months, the days--everything was conceived differently. Only in Juja Road Primary school did I begin to figure out what people meant when they referred to precise dates and times. Grandma never learned to tell time at all. All her life, noon was when shadows were short, and your age was measured by rainy seasons. She got by perfectly well with her system.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 5: Secret Rendezvous, Sex, and the Scent of Sukumawiki

Life, People, Age, School

“Stuntmen and stuntwomen are paid to fall. They fall, get beat up, and get blown up…gracefully. We need to learn to fail gracefully.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

“As of right now I am a vegan. I put that off until after I was done with this tournament. And then I'm gonna go home and I'm probably gonna take over the loan on my stepdad's Prius and I'm gonna drive a clean car. And I'm gonna get a surfboard and learn how to surf, teach myself. I made up this long list of stuff that I couldn't do while I was training that normal people do. It's kind of too late to go to prom, but you know, I'll find something to make up for it.”

Ronda Rousey (1987) American judoka, mixed martial artist, professional wrestler and actress

After became the first U.S. woman to earn an Olympic medal in judo, and asked what she would do next, as quoted in "Rousey Is 1st U.S. Woman to Earn A Medal in Judo", in The Washington Post (14 August 2008) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/13/AR2008081303517.html

People, Cars, Home, Training

“I've forgotten more about national security than George W. Bush will ever learn.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Speaking at the 2004 Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, Richmond, Virginia — as reported by CNN http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/07/elec04.prez.main/ (7 February 2004)]

“I would love to do that. They (Kohli and Root) have been playing brilliantly. I love both. Outstanding cricketers and they have been fantastic for a long period of time. Watching these two bat and perform in the way they have been performing, you can learn a lot.”

Kane Williamson (1990) New Zealand cricketer

New Zealand captain and top batsman Kane Williamson, quoted on Indian Express, "England vs New Zealand: There’s plenty to learn from Virat Kohli and Joe Root, says Kane Williamson" http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/england-vs-new-zealand-theres-plenty-to-learn-from-virat-kohli-joe-root-says-kane-williamson/, March 31, 2016.

Love, Way, Time

“The study of nature is of no significance, for painting is a conventional art, and it is infinitely more worthwhile to learn to draw after w:Holbein.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote from History of Impressionism, Rev. ed. John Rewald, Museum of Modern Art, 1961, p. 89
posthumous quotes, Degas Dance Drawing' (1935)

Art, Nature, Study, Drawing

“After falling for a very long time, as I surmise after the fact (I was falling so fast that I must have lost track), all I can remember is that I found myself under a tree. I was entangled in three or four rather large branches I had broken in my fall. An apple had squashed against my face and made it all wet with its juice.
Fortunately, as you will soon learn, this place was the Garden of Eden, and the tree I had fallen into was none other than the Tree of Life. You would be quite right to think I would have been killed a thousand times over but for this miraculous good fortune.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Life, Thinking, Tree, Time

“If those who despise us stone us as prophets, they must listen to us as prophets. If they curse us as sorcerers, they must learn to curse from us, as sorcerers.
Let us enlighten the young, and let us be condemned for corrupting the young, like Socrates. Let us awaken the old before they sleep forever, though they must read us in secret like the Kabbalah. […] The difficulties and successes of our books and magazines, and the rejection and misinterpretation of the films made from our ideas—are the flounderings of the human mind upon the Paleozoic shore. We are the sand in its gills; let's not lose our grit.”

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

Guest of Honor speech at Aussiecon Two (August 1985), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Secret, Books, Idea, Sleep

“The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

Wisdom, People, Hope, Science

“No amount of study or learning will make a man a leader unless he has the natural qualities of one.”

Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell (1883–1950) senior officer of the British Army

I – The Good General.
"Generals and Generalship" (1939)

Nature, Study

“I am learning that we still have things to learn.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XIV : “Quit worrying and enjoy the ride.”, p. 128

“Mostly the adult Indians did not wish their children to learn these arts from the emissaries of what they astonishingly considered an alien, false and hostile God.”

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

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 21

God, Hostility, Children, Art

“There is much to be said concerning retirement. Some men cannot survive it because they have not prepared themselves for it. For the man who has retained his curiosity, retirement in old age can be the most enjoyable period of his life; but he must be aware of the emptiness of public renown and desire the peace of obscurity; he must still have the wish to learn and understand; in his village, his garden, or his house, he must have some restricted personal occupation. The wise man, after having given all his time to his public activities, now devotes himself entirely to his personal affairs and development; and this will be easier for him if he has been able to interest himself in poetry and the beauties of nature, even during his busiest years. For myself, I cannot imagine a pleasanter old age than one spent in the not too remote country where I could reread and annotate my favorite books. "The mind," says Montaigne, "must thrive upon old age as the mistletoe upon a dead oak."”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Life, Men, Books, Age

“As we survey the various stages of evolution, from the simplest one-cell creatures up to man. we see a steady improvement in the methods of learning and adaptation to a hostile world. Each step in learning ability gives better adaptation and greater chance of survival. We are carried a long way up the scale by innate reflexes and rudimentary muscular learning faculties. Habits indeed, not rational thought, assist us to surmount most of life's obstacles. Most, but by no means all; for learning in the high mammals exhibits the unexplained phenomenon of "insight," which shows itself by sudden changes in behavior in learning situations -- in sudden departures from one method of organizing a task, or solving a problem, to another. Insight, expectancy, set, are the essentially "mind-like" attributes of communication, and it is these, together with the representation of concepts, which require physiological explanation. At the higher end of the scale of evolution, this quality we call "mind" appears more and more prominently, but it is at our own level that learning of a radically new type has developed -- through our powers of organizing thoughts, comparing and setting them into relationship, especially with the use of language. We have a remarkable faculty of forming generalizations, of recognizing universals, of associating and developing them. It is our multitude of general concepts, and our powers of organizing them with the aid of language in varied ways, which forms the backbone of human communication, and which distinguises us from the animals.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: Hebb, D. O., The Organization of Behavior, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1949.
Source: On Human Communication (1957), On Cognition and Recognition, p. 304

Life, Hostility, World, Way

“Muhammad bin Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving captives, and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide… Ibn Battuta’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s arranging marriages of enslaved girls with Muslims on a large scale on the two Ids confirms the statement of Al Umri. “First of all,” writes he, “daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come, sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this the daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing… the Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives sons of Maliks etc. On the sixth day male and female slaves are married.” It was a general practice for Hindu girls of good families to learn the art of dancing. It was a sort of religious rite. They used to dance during weddings, festivals and Pujas at home and in temples. This art was turned ravenous under their Muslim captors or buyers.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Masalik-ul-Absar, E and D, III, p. 580. Ibn Battuta, p. 63, Hindi version by S.A.A. Rizvi in Tughlaq Kalin Bharat, Part I, Aligarh, p. 189. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Marriage, Family, Art, Home

“To few Freemasons of the present day, except to those who have made Freemasonry a subject of especial study, is the name of Desaguliers very familiar. But it is well that they should know that to him, perhaps, more than to any other man, are we indebted for the present existence of Freemasonry as a living Institution, for it was his learning and social position that gave a standing to the Institution, which brought to its support noblemen and men of influence so that the insignificant assemblage of four London Lodges at the Apple-Tree Tavern has expanded into an association which now shelters the entire civilized world. And the moving spirit of all this was John Theophilus Desaguliers.”

Albert Mackey (1807–1881) U.S. writer on freemasonry

(1924), p. 208.
An encyclopedia of freemasonry and its kindred sciences, (1912)

Men, World, Support, Tree

“The wild horse — healthy, prolific, and fully capable of surviving on its own — provides us with the perfect window through which to inquire, observe and learn about nature's grand plan for the quintessential natural horse.”

Jaime Jackson (1947) Horse hoof care professional

The Natural Horse (1997)

Nature, Horse, Perfection

“Whoso obedience from his subjects seeks,
'Tis fitting that he first should learn to rule.”

Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441–1494) Italian writer

Chi vuole aver soggetti, che obbediscano,
Convien, che prima sappia comandare.
Act II, scene i
Timone (c. 1487)

““Had you learned to flatter the Kaiser, you would need not live in the back woods.”
“Had you learned to live in the back woods, you would need not flatter the Kaiser.””

Michael Flynn book Eifelheim

Source: Eifelheim (2006), Chapter XIX (p. 340)

“When I was a young subaltern in the South African War, the water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable we had to put a bit of whiskey in it. By diligent effort I learned to like it.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Aboard the Presidential train during the journey to Fulton, Missouri (March 4, 1946); quoted in Conflict and Crisis by Robert Donovan, University of Missouri Press (1996), p. 190 ISBN 082621066X
Post-war years (1945–1955)

War, Drink, Effort, Water

“To self-regulate, learning systems must be able to
1. Sense, monitor and scan significant aspects of their environment,
2. Relate this information to the operating norms that guide system behavior
3. Detect significant deviations from these norms, and
4. Initiate corrective action when discrepancies are detected.
If these four conditions are satisfied, a continuous process of information exchange is created between a system and its environment, allowing the system to monitor changes and initiate appropriate responses. In this way, the system can operate in an intelligent, self-regulating manner.”

Gareth Morgan book Images of Organization

Source: Images of Organization (1986), p. 77-78 (Morgan, 1998); Cited in: Sherryl Stalinski (2005) A Systems View of Social Systems, Culture and Communities. Saybrook Graduate School. p. 5

Way, Behavior, Intelligence, Sense

“I think that with all the emphasis on achievement, careers and competitiveness, science education has become — with notable bright spots to be sure — a joyless, alienating and frustrating experience for millions and millions of kids.
There are those science-fair-winner types and then there's the rest of the class, not grooving on the material and hence, they find out, doomed to mediocre futures. Seems like ambivalence and hostility aren't such surprising responses to such a message. … I think things might go better if the narrative of our scientific understandings of nature — what some are calling "Big History" — were told early and often, capturing the interest and imagination of students from a young age. They might then be eager to learn the problem-solving, evidence-based process of scientific inquiry that has led to these understandings.”

Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist

"It's Time For A New Narrative; It's Time For 'Big History'", in 13.7: Cosmos & Culture (10 February 2011) http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/02/10/133652898/its-time-for-a-new-narrative-its-time-for-big-history

Hostility, Age, Education, Imagination

“Did we learn nothing from Terminator 3? Apart from the fact that Arnold Schwarzeneggar can act in the same way that octopi can figure skate.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

27 March 2005
Fully Ramblomatic

Way

“Is this politics? I suppose I am going to have to learn all about it, if I am to run Lord Ferris’s household, and throw parties and all. Now…explain to me again just who hates who, and why?”

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

Part III, Chapter III (p. 193)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Hate

“You can make life a lot harder for yourself by focusing on negative things in your path or making excuses for why things didn't go your way. Or, you can refuse to take things personally, let them go, learn from them, and become the best version of yourself. It's a choice. It's actually your choice. If I throw an interception or have a bad day or make a bad business decision, by staying in that place I will just make things worse. Wisdom, someone said, is about knowing the difference between the things you can control and the things you can't. Today, if things go my way, great; and if they don't, that's okay, too, since I always have the chance to overcome them in the future. Whenever my team loses a game, it's an opportunity to learn something. A game is always an experiment.”

Tom Brady (1977) American football quarterback

The TB12 Method (Simon & Schuster, 2017), pp. 271 https://books.google.it/books?id=5xQrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT271-272.

Life, Wisdom, Way, Game

“I don't mean that it is important whether a few of us like Goering, myself, or the others are sentenced to death or hard labor or whatever, but to the German people we will always remain their leaders, right or wrong, and in a few years even you Americans and the rest of the world will see this trial as a mistake. The German people will learn to hate the Americans, distrust the British and French, and unfortunately, perhaps be taken in by the Russians. That will be the worst calamity of all. I hate to think of Moscow ruling Germany or Germany becoming a territorial possession of the Soviet Union. The Allies should take the attitude, now that the war is over, that mistakes have been made on both sides, that those of us here on trial are German patriots, and that though we may have been misled and gone too far with Hitler, we did it in good faith and as German citizens. Furthermore, the German people will always regard our condemnation by a foreign court as unjust and will consider us martyrs.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) German general

To Leon Goldensohn, June 23, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Death, Hate, War, People

“Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place”

Ezra Pound The Cantos

Canto LXXXI
The Cantos

World, Courage

“Thus, it is established that Adam is the human race, by whatever names he was called. Since it is clear that he became manifest in the form of a man, naturally on every plane he is fallible. But God is not his partner in any errors. For, he taught him beauty and ugliness and truth and falsehood, and he learned good and evil. But his kingship is a result of the divine decree. And if he remains continually in his position or steps down, or is deposed from it, in each case it is the result of the divine decree. His cause is exalted with God. Whenever he is a temporal ruler, his leadership is like that of any other. If he is among the prophets, his commands and prohibitions are from God, and his kingship is by God’s command, and he is the leader of the people as long as he lives. After their deaths, some hold that they must continue to be obeyed, and others mention them with their lips, and love for them is continual.”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Treatise on Kingship

Love, Death, God, People

“A child learning his [her] mother tongue is learning how to name; he [she] is building up a meaning potential in respect of a limited number of social functions. These functions [instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, and imaginative] constitute the semiotic environment of a very small child, and may be thought of as universals of human culture”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Michael Halliday (1978, p. 121) as cited in: Harry Daniels, Michael Cole, James V. Wertsch (2007) The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky. p. 148.
1970s and later

Imagination, Universe, Personality

“What I have learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 10, The Drunkard's Walk, p. 217

Chance, Success

“He was universally belov'd, Hospitable, Generous, Learned in many things, skill'd in Musick, a very greate Cherisher of Learned men of whom he had the conversation.”

John Evelyn (1620–1706) writer, gardener and diarist

May 26, 1703.
The Diary

Men, Universe

“When we arrived in Havana on April 15, 1959 ( for Our Man in Havana), Cuba was a country experiencing revolutionary change. How could I not meet Che? Che Guevara was often at the Capri Hotel. I would see him at the restaurant and he'd come to my table to say hello. Che would talk about Ireland and all the guerilla warfare that had taken place there. He knew every battle in Ireland and all of its history. Che knew more about Ireland than John Ford did. I couldn't believe it and finally asked, 'Che, you know so much about Ireland and talk constantly about it. How do you know so much?' He said, 'Well, my grandmother's name was Lynch and I learned everything I know about Ireland at her knee.' He was Che Guevara Lynch! That famous cap he wore was an Irish rebel's cap. I spent a great deal of time with Che Guevara while I was in Havana. I believe he was far less a mercenary than he was a freedom fighter. Today he is a symbol for freedom fighters wherever they are in the world and I think he is a good one.”

Maureen O'Hara (1920–2015) Irish-American film actress and singer

Source: Tis Herself (2004), p.254

World, History, Thinking, Freedom

“Let me then ask your next question: Well, why is this a leak investigation that doesn't result in a charge? I've been trying to think about how to explain this, so let me try. I know baseball analogies are the fad these days. Let me try something.If you saw a baseball game and you saw a pitcher wind up and throw a fastball and hit a batter right smack in the head, and it really, really hurt them, you'd want to know why the pitcher did that. And you'd wonder whether or not the person just reared back and decided, "I've got bad blood with this batter. He hit two home runs off me. I'm just going to hit him in the head as hard as I can."You also might wonder whether or not the pitcher just let go of the ball or his foot slipped, and he had no idea to throw the ball anywhere near the batter's head. And there's lots of shades of gray in between.You might learn that you wanted to hit the batter in the back and it hit him in the head because he moved. You might want to throw it under his chin, but it ended up hitting him on the head.And what you'd want to do is have as much information as you could. You'd want to know: What happened in the dugout? Was this guy complaining about the person he threw at? Did he talk to anyone else? What was he thinking? How does he react? All those things you'd want to know.And then you'd make a decision as to whether this person should be banned from baseball, whether they should be suspended, whether you should do nothing at all and just say, "Hey, the person threw a bad pitch. Get over it."In this case, it's a lot more serious than baseball. And the damage wasn't to one person. It wasn't just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us.And as you sit back, you want to learn: Why was this information going out? Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters? Why did Mr. Libby say what he did? Why did he tell Judith Miller three times? Why did he tell the press secretary on Monday? Why did he tell Mr. Cooper? And was this something where he intended to cause whatever damage was caused?Or did they intend to do something else and where are the shades of gray?And what we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He's trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view.”

Patrick Fitzgerald (1960) American lawyer

Fitzgerald News Conference from the Washington Post (October 28, 2005)

People, Justice, Guy, Home

“Are we not natural creatures? Are we not evolved, too? Surely all the lessons we’ve learned in the past century come to a single point: we have to stop thinking of ourselves as somehow apart from nature, and recognise that we’re inseparable from it.”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 17 (p. 132)

Nature, Thinking, Past

“Historically, it may be useful to fancy playfulness and piety as being the respective residues of the aristocratic and priestly backgrounds of the intellectual function. The element of play seems to be rooted in the ethos of the leisure class, which has always been central in the history of creative imagination and humanistic learning. The element of piety is reminiscent of the priestly inheritance of the intellectuals: the quest for and the possession of truth was a holy office. As their legatee, the modern intellectual inherits the vulnerability of the aristocrat to the animus of Puritanism and egalitarianism and the vulnerability of the priest to anticlericalism and popular assaults upon hierarchy. We need not be surprised, then, if the intellectual’s position has rarely been comfortable in a country which is, above all others, the home of the democrat and the antinomian.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), pp. 32-33

Truth, Home, Imagination, History

“If Soviet society is to move forward with confidence toward our great goals, each new generation must rise to an ever-higher level of learning and general cultivation, occupational skill and civic activism. One might say that such is the law of societal progress. In the context of the scientific and technological revolution, under a virtual avalanche of information, this law imposes unwontedly high demands on both those who study and those who teach—from rank-and-file classroom teachers to government ministers.”

Konstantin Chernenko (1911–1985) Soviet politician

Quoted in "Soviet Education" - Page 109 - by International Arts and Sciences Press, M.E. Sharpe, Inc - Education - 1958

Law, Confidence, Study, Teachers

“I am no less confident, that no learned lawyer will affirm that an impeachment can lie against the King, they all going in his name: and one of their maxims is, that the King can do no wrong.”

Charles I of England (1600–1649) monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland

Reasons for declining the jurisdiction of the High Court of Justice http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur083.htm (21 January 1649)

Lie, Confidence

“There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not merely observe men, we are men. In this case we have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book I, Chapter 4, "What Lies behind the Law"
Mere Christianity (1952)

Men, Universe

“Myths simply throw roadblocks in the path to enlightenment, and it is from truth that we have the most to learn. One man's truth, however, can be another's myth, and only through dispassionate and disinterested dissection of such stories can we tell the difference. The Confederate experience is dotted with episodes that are not particularly admirable.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (1996), p. 178

Truth

“Somewhere about 1893 I started teaching Scouting to young soldiers in my regiment. When these young fellows joined the Army they had learned reading, writing, and arithmetic in school but as a rule not much else. They were nice lads and made very good parade soldiers, obeyed orders, kept themselves clean and smart and all that, but they had never been taught to be men, how to look after themselves, how to take responsibility, and so on. They had not had my chances of education outside the classroom.
They had been brought up in the herd at school, they were trained as a herd in the Army; they simply did as they were told and had no ideas or initiative of their own. In action they carried out orders, but if their officer was shot they were as helpless as a flock of sheep. Tell one of them to ride out alone with a message on a dark night and ten to one he would lose his way.
I wanted to make them feel that they were a match for any enemy, able to find their way by the stars or map, accustomed to notice all tracks and signs and to read their meaning, and able to fend for themselves away from regimental cooks and barracks.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement

"BE PREPARED" http://www.pinetreeweb.com/bp-listener.htm, Listener Magazine (1937)

Men, Education, School, Way

“Codification and mechanisms do not sufficiently ensure the right to peace. What is crucial is to develop a true culture of peace. This requires education for peace. Everyone – not only children – should be educated in compromise, cooperation, empathy, solidarity, compassion, restoration and reconciliation. In short, we must learn respect for others and how to live in harmony, even if we agree to disagree. Negotiation and mediation skills must be taught so as to prevent breaches of the peace and other forms of violence. A philosophical paradigm change is necessary, so that we are not caught in the old mind-set, in the prevailing culture of violence, the logic of war, aggressive attitudes, practices of economic exploitation and cultural imperialism.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Statement by Alfred de Zayas, 20/2/2013 http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13030&LangID=E. 2013

War, Children, Education, Peace

“The value and rank of a learned man is more than his knowledge.”

Ali al-Hadi (829–868) imam

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 3.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, Religious

Knowledge

“[ The love of money and the love of learning rarely meet. ]”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Love, Money

“The power of attending to what is spoken, or in other words the power of listening, is one of the most useful habits that we can acquire; it keeps the mind active, and we can thus learn not only by hearing, but by reading and reflection, by fixing our minds steadily on the matter which we wish to master. It is… in a great degree, the sure means of success in all that we undertake; and if the power is not acquired early in life, great labour will be necessary to acquire it afterwards.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Life, Reading, Success

“The main difficulty in using either lazo or bolas, is to ride so well, as to be able at full speed, and while suddenly turning about, to whirl them so steadily round the head, as to take aim: on foot any person would soon learn the art. One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush; and its revolving motion being thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and like magic caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured. Luckily he was an old practised animal, and knew what it meant; otherwise he would probably have kicked till he had thrown himself down. The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself.”

Charles Darwin book The Voyage of the Beagle

Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter III: "Montevideo — Maldonado, etc.", page 51 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=70&itemID=F11&viewtype=image

Art, Jerk, Laughter, Animals

“Those whose minds are jammed with prejudice have room for little else. Growth is dead. Learning is gridlocked. They may understand our logic, but logic makes no difference. The word root of prejudice, praejudicium, implies prejudgment. People are prejudiced both for and against a philosophy, a religion, a belief system. They are prejudiced for or against a political party, the make of an automobile, a race, a person — you name it.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: How to Argue and Win Every Time (1995), Ch. 6 : The Power of Prejudice : Examining the Garment, Bleaching the Stain, p. 74

People, Religion, Understanding, Personality

“Certainly one thing that I've learned is that it is important to pick a problem based on how much you care about it.”

Andrew Wiles (1953) British mathematician

Nova Interview

Problem

“Deep learning will make you acceptable to the learned; but it is only an obliging and easy behaviour, and entertaining conversation, that will make you agreeable to all companies.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

“I’m learning, Maia thought. They keep making mistakes and I keep getting stronger.
At this rate, someday I may actually gain control over my life.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 531)

Life

“We cannot allow ourselves to be prejudiced against a subject, based upon what someone else has said or just upon the difficulty we encounter in learning.”

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

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 239

“We are not put into this world to sit still and know; we are put into it to act.
It is true that in order to learn men must for a little while withdraw from action, must seek some quiet place of remove from the bustle of affairs, where their thoughts may run clear and tranquil, and the heats of business be for the time put off; but that cloistered refuge is no place to dream in.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

“ Princeton for the Nation's Service http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/mudd/online_ex/wilsonline/4dn8nsvc.html”, Inaugural address as President of Princeton (25 October 1902); this speech is different from his 1896 speech of the same title. 1900s

Men, World, Dreams, Business

“When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Illustrated London News (7 November 1908)

Men

“The Soviet Union does not allow any church of any kind to interfere with education, and religion is not taught in public schools. It seems to me that this is the greatest gift of the Russian Revolution to the modern world. Most educated modern men no longer believe in religious dogma. If questioned they will usually resort to double-talk before admitting the fact. But who today actually believes that this world is ruled and directed by a benevolent person of great power who, on humble appeal, will change the course of events at our request? Who believes in miracles? Many folk follow religious ceremonies and services and allow their children to learn fairy tales and so-called religious truth, which in time the children come to recognize as conventional lies told by their parents and teachers for the children's good. One can hardly exaggerate the moral disaster of the custom. We have to thank the Soviet Union for the courage to stop it.”

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

The Autobiography of W.E. Burghardt Du Bois (1968), Ch. IV : The Soviet Union; he later states in Ch. XVI : My Character: "I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools."

Men, Children, Truth, World

“What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man's plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Fortune
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Dance

“I gave to you, now, you give to me
I'd like to know what you learned.
The sky is blue and so is the sea
What is the color, when black is burned?”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

I Am a Child, from Last Time Around (1968)
Song lyrics, With Buffalo Springfield

Color, Sea

“The witches, the wise women, and the healers were also always the counselors. It's a whole other tradition of knowledge and learning that has been suppressed because it had political implications.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

As quoted in The Burning Times (1990)

Women, Knowledge

“That’s behind me. Same as with everything else in my life, though, I approached what I learned with eyes and ears half-closed. It’s only now I realise how dangerous and destructive Christian culture has become. If there was ever any love in it, it’s been bled out. Three major religions preach Holy War: Shintoism, Islam, and Christianity. Christianity is the only one hypocritical enough simultaneously to enjoin its followers to turn the other cheek and suffer fools gladly and the rest of it. Look at the record. Germany was a Christian country almost exactly one hundred times as long as it was Nazi. Did the Nazis undo in twelve years all the church had done in twelve centuries? No, they built on it. Hitler was a baptised Catholic and never excommunicated. When he was enlisting the support of the bishops in 1933 he promised to do nothing to the Jews that the church had not already, and kept his promise.”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 16 (p. 124)

Love, Life, War, Religion

“As learned commentators view
In Homer more than Homer knew.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)

“The double meaning has been given to suit people's diverse intelligence. The apparent contradictions are meant to stimulate the learned to deeper study.”

Averroes (1126–1198) Medieval Arab scholar and philosopher

Ch 2
The Decisive Treatise

People, Intelligence, Study

“I've learned so much from being a mom about the kind of person I want to be, the kind of woman I want to be. Motherhood has taught me mindfulness. If you just parent on instinct, you'll screw your kid up for life. You have to be so mindful.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

Interview with Gwyneth Paltrow, Good Housekeeping http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/family/celebrity-interviews/gwyneth-paltrow-interview-country-strong (2010)

Life, Moms, Parent, Personality

“Scholars, like princes, may learn something by being incognito. Yet we see those who cannot go into a bookseller's shop, or bear to be five minutes in a stage-coach, without letting you know who they are. They carry their reputation about with them as the snail does its shell, and sit under its canopy, like the lady in the lobster. I cannot understand this at all. What is the use of a man's always revolving round his own little circle? He must, one should think, be tired of it himself, as well as tire other people.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On People With One Idea" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

People, Understanding, Thinking

“My closing statement to the senate and the council is…youth need art this truth is, not hard to swallow. I see many artistic people wallow in sorrow off belief. They aren't good enough to be. Give us a chance let us write our own histories. In a world conforming us instead of conforming for us. Kids ain't dumb just bored of the same old junk. Formulated highlight text, define learning. Is it confined to enclosed spaces eight hours a day? If it is I know why the caged bird sings.”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Fate
20s A Difficult Age (2017)

People, Truth, Youth, World

Quotes about learning page 49

Quotes about learning
page 49