Quotes about learning
page 52

“A sillie swaine, passing over an arm of the sea with his seede corne in a sacke, by mischance at the landing, his sacke fell into the water, and so his corne being lefte there till the next low water, became somewhat brackish, yet such was the necessity of the man, as that he (notwithstanding hee was out of all hope to have any good successe thereby, yet not being able to buie any other) bestowed the same wheat upon his plowed groundes, by the advice of a gentleman of good worship from whence I received the report thereof, and in June when the harvest time came about, he reaped a rich crop of goodly wheat such as in that yeare not any of his neighbours had the like, and yet notwithstanding (for aught that ever I could yet learne) neither he nor any other of his countrimen would ever adventure to make any further use thereof, belike being perswaded, unless that the corne by chance fell into the sea, it would never fructifie.”

Hugh Plat (1552–1608) writer

As cited in: Robert Kemp Philp (1859, p. 74)
The Jewell House of Art and Nature, 1594

Hope, Water, Chance, Time

“Many much-learned men have no intelligence.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Freeman (1948), p. 152 [Democr. "Fragment B 64" http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/philosophes/democrite/diels.htm ("Demokrates 29" in Stobaeus, Anthologium III, 4, 81)] Variant: There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom.

Men, Intelligence

“The Age of Reptiles ended because it had gone on long enough and it was all a mistake in the first place. A better day was dawning at the close of the Mesozoic Era. There were some little warm-blooded animals around which had been stealing and eating the eggs of the Dinosaurs, and they were gradually learning to steal other things, too. Civilization was just around the corner.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Dinosaur
How to Become Extinct (1941)

Age, Animals

“When, where, and how were you, Joseph Smith, first called? How old were you? and what were you qualifications? I was between fourteen and fifteen years of age. Had you been to college? No. Had you studied in any seminary of learning? No. Did you know how to read? Yes. How to write? Yes. Did you understand much about arithmetic? No. About grammar? No. Did you understand all the branches of education which are generally taught in our common schools? No. But yet you say the Lord called you when you were but fourteen or fifteen years of age? How did he call you? I will give you a brief history as it came from his own mouth. I have often heard him relate it. He was wrought upon by the Spirit of God, and felt the necessity of repenting of his sins and serving God. He retired from his father's house a little way, and bowed himself down in the wilderness, and called upon the name of the Lord. He was inexperienced, and in great anxiety and trouble of mind in regard to what church he should join. He had been solicited by many churches to join with them, and he was in great anxiety to know which was right. He pleaded with the Lord to give him wisdom on the subject; and while he was thus praying, he beheld a vision, and saw a light approaching him from the heavens; and as it came down and rested on the tops of the trees, it became more glorious; and as it surrounded him, his mind was immediately caught away from beholding surrounding objects. In this cloud of light he saw two glorious personages; and one, pointing to the other, said, "Behold my beloved son! hear ye him."”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 7:220 (August 14, 1859).
Joseph Smith Jr.'s First Vision

Wisdom, God, Age, Education

“What the Universities have mainly done—what I have found the University did for me, was that it taught me to read in various languages and various sciences, so that I could go into the books that treated of these things, and try anything I wanted to make myself master of gradually, as I found it suit me. Whatever you may think of all that, the clearest and most imperative duty lies on every one of you to be assiduous in your reading; and learn to be good readers, which is, perhaps, a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading—to read all kinds of things that you have an interest in, and that you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.”

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

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Books, Imagination, Thinking, Universe

“The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior, of our place in nature.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Referring to chimpanzees, reported in Jane Goodall: Primatologist and Animal Activist (2009) by Connie Jankowski, p. 13

Life, Behavior, Understanding, Nature

“After logic we must proceed to philosophy proper. Here too we have to learn from our predecessors, just as in mathematics and law. Thus it is wrong to forbid the study of ancient philosophy. Harm from it is accidental, like harm from taking medicine, drinking water, or studying law.”

Averroes (1126–1198) Medieval Arab scholar and philosopher

Ch 1.9
The Decisive Treatise

Law, Mathematics, Drink, Study

“What is learning but a set of sensory signals from the environment, with different forms of learning resulting from different types or patterns of sensory signals?”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

“The human mind may know God, and learn of God, though it has no terms by which to explain Him; it may think of Him as Absolute, as Infinite, as Personal, while it may never in this life be able to fathom the full meaning of these sublime ideas.”

George C. Lorimer (1838–1904) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 267.

Life, God, Idea, Thinking

“Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

"Gnome" in Dublin Magazine Vol. 9 (1934), p. 8

World, Courage

“You think then, that I know my profession? Why, my poor fellow; if I had nothing more to find out and to learn I could not paint any longer.”

Jules Dupré (1811–1889) French painter

as quoted by Albert Wolff, 1880's, in Notes upon certain masters of the XIX century, - printed not published MDCCCLXXXVI (1880's), The Art Age Press, 400 N.Y. (written after the exhibition 'Cent Chefs-d'Oeuvres: the Choiche of the French Private Galleries', Petit, Paris / Baschet, New York, 1883, p. 36
Dupré is responding in this quote to a purchaser who was teasing him to finish a picture only in a few hours. Dupré replied in the presence of Albert Wolff

Thinking, Painting

“What is required is self-belief, most importantly. And secondly, you should be ready to listen, to be strong to acknowledge what your weakness is, and learn, improve… If you have that, then all this that you are talking about, fielding, running between wickets, they are all minor things…”

Kapil Dev (1959) Indian cricketer

In an interview on "Fielding, running between wickets" quoted in "The Rediff Cricket Interview / Kapil Dev".

Strong

“Slowly he turned the pages, scanning the pictures and the text for a repetition of the combination B-O-Y. Presently he found it beneath a picture of another little ape and a strange animal which went upon four legs like the jackal and resembled him not a little. Beneath this picture the bugs appeared as: A BOY AND A DOG There they were, the three little bugs which always accompanied the little ape.
And so he progressed very, very slowly, for it was a hard and laborious task which he had set himself without knowing it — a task which might seem to you or me impossible — learning to read without having the slightest knowledge of letters or written language, or the faintest idea that such things existed.
He did not accomplish it in a day, or in a week, or in a month, or in a year; but slowly, very slowly, he learned after he had grasped the possibilities which lay in those little bugs, so that by the time he was fifteen he knew the various combinations of letters which stood for every pictured figure in the little primer and in one or two of the picture books.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 7 : The Light of Knowledge

Books, Dogs, Boy, Idea

“Human beings learn from their errors and error during a process can have educational effect, but why the humans make the mistakes? Because the process of education is the one of learning from errors. It means that the ones make the mistakes and this gives them the power of motivational ability.”

Khosrow Bagheri (1957) Iranian philosopher of education

Source: Website of Mehr News Agency, 2017 http://www.mehrnews.com/news/3954046/%D9%BE%D8%B0%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%B4-%D8%AE%D8%B7%D8%A7-%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D8%AA%D8%B1%D8%A8%DB%8C%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%B6%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B1%DB%8C-%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA

Education, Error, Motivation

“When office and wealth become the gods of a people, and the most unworthy and unfit most aspire to the former, and fraud becomes the highway to the latter, the land will reek with falsehood and sweat lies and chicane. When the offices are open to all, merit and stern integrity and the dignity of unsullied honor will attain them only rarely and by accident. To be able to serve the country well, will cease to be a reason why the great and wise and learned should be selected to render service. Other qualifications, less honorable, will be more available.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. III : The Master, p. 66

God, People, Fraud, Country

“It is rather remarkable that the majority of learned men have closed their minds to what seemed bare and simple facts to many people.”

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) British physicist

Raymond, p. 367 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t80k3mq4s;view=1up;seq=409 Raymond, or Life and Death (1916)

Men, People

“He's learning me all of his experience.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

Regarding Bill Dickey, circa spring 1949, paraphrased in "Yogi, His Autobiography: Dickey Hired as Mask Tutor" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Ep5RAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PmwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7202%2C853227 by Berra, with Ed Fitzgerald, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Sunday, March 5, 1961), Section 3, Page 4. Yogiisms

“One of the most natural of reactions during the war was intolerance. But the inevitable disregard for the opinions and feelings of minorities is none the less a disturbing product of war psychology. The slow and difficult advances which tolerance and liberalism have made through long periods of development are dissipated almost in a night when the necessary war-time habits of thought hold the minds of the people. The necessity for a common purpose and a united intellectual front becomes paramount to everything else. But when the need for such a solidarity is past there should be a quick and generous readiness to revert to the old and normal habits of thought. There should be an intellectual demobilization as well as a military demobilization. Progress depends very largely on the encouragement of variety. Whatever tends to standardize the community, to establish fixed and rigid modes of thought, tends to fossilize society. If we all believed the same thing and thought the same thoughts and applied the same valuations to all the occurrences about us, we should reach a state of equilibrium closely akin to an intellectual and spiritual paralysis. It is the ferment of ideas, the clash of disagreeing judgments, the privilege of the individual to develop his own thoughts and shape his own character, that makes progress possible. It is not possible to learn much from those who uniformly agree with us. But many useful things are learned from those who disagree with us; and even when we can gain nothing our differences are likely to do us no harm. In this period of after-war rigidity, suspicion, and intolerance our own country has not been exempt from unfortunate experiences. Thanks to our comparative isolation, we have known less of the international frictions and rivalries than some other countries less fortunately situated. But among some of the varying racial, religious, and social groups of our people there have been manifestations of an intolerance of opinion, a narrowness to outlook, a fixity of judgment, against which we may well be warned. It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based upon the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion. To a great extent this country owes its beginnings to the determination of our hardy ancestors to maintain complete freedom in religion. Instead of a state church we have decreed that every citizen shall be free to follow the dictates of his own conscience as to his religious beliefs and affiliations. Under that guaranty we have erected a system which certainly is justified by its fruits. Under no other could we have dared to invite the peoples of all countries and creeds to come here and unite with us in creating the State of which we are all citizens.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

War, People, Religion, Feeling

“My own lab has two Chinese, a Malaysian, a Canadian, an American, a German, it has had all sorts of people. And it’s actually fun because people from different countries come together, they have cultural exchanges, they learn more about each others’ countries and way of life. Science is a great international mixer, so the idea that it is a sort of cricket match where our team won — that simply is a wrong way of looking at scientific discovery.”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

Commenting on the adulation he received in India as an Indian.
Venki’ makes light of India link- Winner says not to treat science like cricket; league of misses grows

Life, People, Way, Idea

“When professors teach, they teach what they love. What they are experts in. What it is easy for them to learn. Thus, it is easy to forget what it is like to be the student who struggles in the classroom.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wadewitz, Adrianne. (August 12, 2013). "What I learned as the worst student in the class" http://www.hastac.org/blogs/wadewitz/2013/08/12/what-i-learned-worst-student-class. HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance Collaboratory. — reprinted and cited in: "How Adrianne Wadewitz learnt to embrace failure" http://www.smh.com.au/world/how-adrianne-wadewitz-learnt-to-embrace-failure-20140425-zqzgx.html. The Sydney Morning Herald. April 25, 2014. Retrieved April 25, 2014.

Love, Forgetting

“"Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice." … They have experienced secretly and privately their natural human impulse toward sadism and brutality. As I say in this new book of mine, not merely did I learn to kill with a noose of piano wire put around somebody's neck from behind, but I learned to enjoy the prospect of killing that way. It's those things that you learn about yourself that you never forget. You learn that you have much wider dimensions than you had imagined before you had to fight a war. That's salutary. It's well to know exactly who you are so you can conduct the rest of your life properly.”

Paul Fussell (1924–2012) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Humanities interview (1996)

Life, War, Secret, Books

“When I was young, I learned a quote in Sunday school that has stayed with me throughout my life. It said, 'teach us to number our days that we gain a heart of wisdom.' * Most of us will wake up 28,762 days- and then one day - we won’t. That means you have about 21,000 days left - and about 14,000 of them for your career. So herein lies the urgency.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

NYU Commencement Speech, Blank to Millennials: 'Make the Days of Your Life Matter'" https://www.inc.com/zoe-henry/steve-blank-2016-commencement-speech-steve-jobs.html,"Steve, May 23, 2016.

Life, Wisdom, School, Quotes

“If we do not learn from our stumbles, we can't growth.”

Layal Abboud (1982) Lebanese pop singer

September 27, 2009; gerasanews.com http://www.gerasanews.com/article/17106 2009

“But I still believe that I have not learned much and I have much more to learn.”

Prito Reza (1984) Photographer

“An' I learned about women from 'er.”

Rudyard Kipling book Barrack-Room Ballads

The Ladies, ending line to Stanzas III, IV, and V.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

Women

“In my opinion, people in our society are becoming like clones. Children are not reading books, and they are not learning by doing. They're just sitting and watching each other be pretty. Like my vases.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Etelaat-e-Banoovan,(1971) no 755, Year Fifteenth,Wednesday 15th December.

Children, People, Books, Reading

“Fifty years ago, when Europeans and Americans still distinguished high culture from popular culture, and when classical learning was still highly esteemed in colleges and universities, C. P. Snow delivered his famous Rede Lecture at Cambridge University, "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." Snow did more than warn of the growing split between the old culture of the humanities and the rising culture of science. He took Britain's literary aristocracy to task for its dangerous dismissal of scientific and technological progress, which Snow believed offered the solutions to the world's deepest problems. In a vitriolic response to Snow, the literary critic F. R. Leavis defended the primacy of the humanities for a civilizing education, insisting that science must not be allowed to operate outside of the moral norms that a first-rate humanistic education alone could provide.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Looking for an Honest Man (2009)

World, Education, Problem, Universe

“Well you do enough talk
My little hawk, why do you cry? Tell me what did you learn
From the Tillamook burn
Or the Fourth of July?
We're all gonna die”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Fourth of July"
Lyrics, Carrie and Lowell (2015)

Cry

“I've been learning to live without you now
But I miss you sometimes
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning them again.”

Don Henley (1947) American singer, lyricist, producer and drummer

"The Heart of the Matter"
Song lyrics, The End of the Innocence (1989)

Understanding

“At carefree times in early boyhood I chose to believe that life was a kind of ball game, but with a mix of years and perception I learned better.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Chapter 1, The Trolley Car That Ran By Ebbets Field, p. 43

Life, Game, Time

“I dare say that most of you gentlemen know that a good many pig-iron handlers can never learn to shovel right; the ordinary pig-iron handler is not the type of man well suited to shoveling. He is to stupid; there is too much mental strain, too much knack required of a shoveled for the pig-iron handler to take kindly to shoveling.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Testimony of Frederick W. Taylor... 1912, p. 111.

Stupidity

“There are a couple of skills you take away from Housewives. You learn to be quick on your feet, stand your ground. I’ve always been kind of unapologetic, but you grow into that or into your own skin. You have a choice: you can either grow into your skin or you can back out. It will test your strength and patience - it will definitely run the gamut so you can figure out a little bit more of what you’re made of.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to Billboard https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/8301673/erika-jayne-pretty-mess-interview (2018)

Patience

“If he had learned one thing as a Soldier it was that any decision, even a bad one, was better than none.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 130
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Rifles (1988)

Decision

“I did learn one valuable lesson, though.
I learned that you can’t choose the ways in which you’ll be tested.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Calculating God

Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 7 (p. 77)

Way

“The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.”

Margot Fonteyn (1919–1991) English ballerina

As quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations‎ (1988) by James Beasley Simpson; also quoted in Running on Empty: Meditations for Indispensable Women (1992) by Ellen Sue Stern, p. 235
Paraphrased variants: The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.
Take your work seriously, but never yourself.

“I never ask my wife about my flaws. Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor. You don't want any woman to look under the carpet because there's lots of flaws underneath. Joanne believes my character in a film we did together, "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge" comes closest to who I really am. I personally don't think there's one character who comes close… but I learned a long time ago not to disagree on things that I don't have a solid opinion about.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in Craig Modderno, "Newman remains animated at 81," Reuters (2006-06-12)

Thinking, Sense, Time, Personality

“Every day before supper and before we went to services on Sundays my grandmother would read the Bible to me, and my grandfather would pray. We even had devotions before going to pick cotton in the fields. Prayer and the Bible, became a part of my everyday thoughts and beliefs. I learned to put my trust in God and to seek Him as my strength.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Quiet Strength (2000)

God, Reading, Parting

“The government, with its bayonets, will learn in a single Winter how powerless are armed forces against the will of a united determined, and self-reliant nation.”

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891) Irish politician

"No Rent" Manifesto (1881)

Winter

“The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 223

“Better information awareness does not mean less personal freedoms. Feeling safe in school is a prerequisite for a conducive learning environment. Everyone should be free to express their opinions, voice their concerns, and become better informed.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Source: Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

School, Feeling, Freedom, Personality

“Faced with almost an infinity of details you cannot afford to deal constantly with the specific; you must learn to embrace more and more detail under the cover of generality.”

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

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

“With peace has come prosperity. Burdens have been great, but the strength to bear them has been greater. The condition of those who toil is higher, better, more secure than in all the ages past. Out of the darkness of a great conflict has appeared the vision of a nearer, clearer than ever before, the life on earth and less under the deadening restraint of course more and more under the vitalizing influence of reason. Moral power has been triumphing over physical power. Education will tend to bring reason and experience of the past into the solution of the problems of the future. We must look to service and not selfishness, for service is the foundation of progress. The greatest lesson that we have to learn is to seek ever the public welfare, to build up, to maintain our American heritage.”

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

1920s, America and the War (1920)

Life, Age, Education, Peace

“You think my apology means I'm weak. But it doesn't. It means I am trying to learn how to be strong.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

Thinking, Strong

“I cannot exist entirely except when somehow I go beyond the stage of action. Otherwise I’m a soldier, a professional, a man of learning, not a “total human being.” The fragmentary state of humanity is basically the same as the choice of an object. When you limit your desires to possessing political power, for instance, you act and know what you have to do. … You insert your existence advantageously into time. Each of your moments becomes useful. With each moment, the possibility is given you to advance to some chosen goal, and your time becomes a march toward that goal—what’s normally called living. … Every action makes you a fragmentary existence. I hold on to my nature as an entirety only by refusing to act—or at least by denying the superiority of time, which is reserved for action.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxvii

Nature, Time

“It's as if Brian de Palma were saying, "What is getting older if it isn't learning more ways that you're vulnerable?"”

Pauline Kael book Movie Love

Review of Casualties of War, p. 176.
Movie Love (1991)

Way

“[T]he sciences that are expressed by numbers or by other small signs, are easily learned; and… this facility rather than its demonstrability is what has made the fortune of algebra.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

p, 125
Man a Machine (1747)

Science

“Sandro was surprised when I tried to explain to him some of the ideas that at the time I was confusedly cultivating. That the nobility of man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error, lay in making himself the conquerer of matter, and that I had enrolled in chemistry because I wanted to remain faithful to this nobility. That conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were laboriously learning to unravel, was poetry, loftier and more solemn than all the poetry we had swallowed down in liceo; and come to think of it, it even rhymed!”

Primo Levi book The Periodic Table

"Iron"
The Periodic Table (1975)

Faith, Error, Idea, Understanding

“He said that humanity in the main was crass, stupid, boorish and vulgar, and that I could learn at least this much from you.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 6, section 5 (p. 451)

Stupidity

“In the past ten years unarmed gallant men and women of the United States have given living testimony to the moral power and efficacy of nonviolence. By the thousands, faceless, anonymous, relentless young people, black and white, have temporarily left the ivory towers of learning for the barricades of bias. Their courageous and disciplined activities have come as a refreshing oasis in a desert sweltering with the heat of injustice. They have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. One day all of America will be proud of their achievements.”

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

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)

Women, Men, People, Democracy

“The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Love

Love, People

“Although we all make mistakes in life, the problems occur when we try to hide our mistakes, to cover them up rather than to learn from them and allow other people to learn from them.”

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

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 175

Life, People, Problem

“OOA - Object-Oriented Analysis - is based upon concepts that we first learned in kindergarten: objects and attributes, wholes and parts, classes and members.”

Peter Coad (1953) American software entrepreneur

Peter Coad & Ed Yourdon (1991, p. 1); cited in: Sten Carlsson and Benneth Christiansson. (1999) " The Concept of Object and its Relation to Human Thinking: Some Misunderstandings Concerning the Connection between Object-Orientation and Human Thinking http://www.vits.org/publikationer/dokument/289.pdf." Informatica, Lith. Acad. Sci. 10.2. p. 147-160.

Parting

“to show that [the success of my portray-] photographs was not due to subject matter – not to special trees or faces, or interiors, to special privileges – clouds were there for everyone... I wanted to photograph clouds to find out what I had learned in forty years about photography. Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life... My aim is increasingly to make my photographs look so much like photographs that unless one has eyes and sees, they won't be seen – and still everyone will never forget them having once looked at them.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

'How I came to Photograph Clouds', Alfred Stieglitz, in 'Amateur Photographer and Photography', (19 September 1923): 255.
about his new subject: 'clouds' in his long series 'Equivalents' he started in 1922

Life, Tree, Success, Forgetting

“The country does want rest, we all want rest. Our very civilization wants it — and we mean that it shall have it. It shall have rest — repose — refreshment of soul and re-invigoration of faculty. And that rest shall be of life and not of death. It shall not be a poison that pacifies restlessness in death, nor shall it be any kind of anodyne or patting or propping or bolstering — as if a man with a cancer in his breast would be well if he only said he was so and wore a clean shirt and kept his shoes tied. We want the rest of a real Union, not of a name, not of a great transparent sham, which good old gentlemen must coddle and pat and dandle, and declare wheedlingly is the dearest Union that ever was, SO it is; and naughty, ugly old fanatics shan't frighten the pretty precious — no, they sha'n't. Are we babies or men? This is not the Union our fathers framed — and when slavery says that it will tolerate a Union on condition that freedom holds its tongue and consents that the Constitution means first slavery at all costs and then liberty, if you can get it, it speaks plainly and manfully, and says what it means. There are not wanting men enough to fall on their knees and cry: 'Certainly, certainly, stay on those terms. Don't go out of the Union — please don't go out; we'll promise to take great care in future that you have everything you want. Hold our tongues? Certainly. These people who talk about liberty are only a few fanatics — they are tolerably educated, but most of 'em are crazy; we don't speak to them in the street; we don't ask them to dinner; really, they are of no account, and if you'll really consent to stay in the Union, we'll see if we can't turn Plymouth Rock into a lump of dough'. I don't believe the Southern gentlemen want to be fed on dough. I believe they see quite as clearly as we do that this is not the sentiment of the North, because they can read the election returns as well as we. The thoughtful men among them see and feel that there is a hearty abhorrence of slavery among us, and a hearty desire to prevent its increase and expansion, and a constantly deepening conviction that the two systems of society are incompatible. When they want to know the sentiment of the North, they do not open their ears to speeches, they open their eyes, and go and look in the ballot-box, and they see there a constantly growing resolution that the Union of the United States shall no longer be a pretty name for the extension of slavery and the subversion of the Constitution. Both parties stand front to front. Each claims that the other is aggressive, that its rights have been outraged, and that the Constitution is on its side. Who shall decide? Shall it be the Supreme Court? But that is only a co-ordinate branch of the government. Its right to decide is not mutually acknowledged. There is no universally recognized official expounder of the meaning of the Constitution. Such an instrument, written or unwritten, always means in a crisis what the people choose. The people of the United States will always interpret the Constitution for themselves, because that is the nature of popular governments, and because they have learned that judges are sometimes appointed to do partisan service.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Life, Death, Men, People

“I was happy to do it when I saw the chance of helping out the local theater scene … I am delighted to be able to help the theaters where I grew up and learned my profession. I have never forgotten my past.”

Goran Višnjić (1972) Croatian actor

Happiness, Chance, Past, Help

“Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?”

Clive Staples Lewis book A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed (1961), Ch. 1

Search, Time, Dead

“First, the eight rules of tolerance: 1. Stay out of the way. 2. Don't pick a fight. 3. If challenged, walk away. 4. Avoid eye contact. 5. If your enemy is diurnal, learn to be nocturnal. 6. Vice versa. 7. Possess nothing the other wants. 8. Draw the line at hurting kids: I will fight to the death.
After tolerance is achieved comes play. Here are the nine rules of play: 1. Know when to quit. 2. Learn how to handicap. 3. Learn what frightens the other (cat claws). 4. Don't let it get to you. It's just a game; you mustn't take it seriously (cats have trouble with this one—escalation is always a risk in cat games). 5. Don't eat your playmate. 6. Pay attention to the signals on the other side—for instance, “enough” and “quit.” 7. Don't suddenly change the rules. 8. Don't be a sore loser. 9. Remember: It's only a game.
And if play succeeds, we can move on to the eight rules of friendship: 1. Learn the rules of your opposite number. 2. Recognize that danger is no longer relevant. 3. Take your time. 4. One step at a time. 5. Apologize often by learning the other's words, gestures, sounds, or postures for “I'm sorry.””

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

6. Acknowledge mistakes. 7. Make the offer of friendship more than once. 8. Express curiosity about what the other is like.
Source: Raising the Peaceable Kingdom (2005), Ch. 5

Death, Friendship, Way, Game

“We shot the first five seasons up in Vancouver, so we were protected from the public mania, and the industry mania, for the most part. I was first exposed to it when I became pregnant in the first season, and I quickly learned the power of the machine; then again when I was trying to negotiate my salary to be closer to equal to what David [Duchovny] was making, rather than a quarter. Yes, it's been an ongoing education, but it continues to astound me.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On the wage gap and how The X-Files helped her understand the entertainment industry — Hunger TV "One From The Archives: The Interview: Gillian Anderson" http://www.hungertv.com/feature/interview-gillian-anderson/ (October 19, 2014) 2010s

Education, Parting, Season

“Failure to delegate causes managers to be crushed and fail under the weight of accumulated duties that they do not know and have not learned to delegate.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

James D. Mooney (1931), cited in: Guy Kimberley Hutt (1990), Organizational decentralization and delegation in large New York. p. 1

Failure

“Before my father started using morphine again he sent me to a Japanese person to learn something called Karate. I learn these things fast because I am blank inside, and I have no special way of moving or doing things so one way is the same to me as another. ‘”

William S. Burroughs book The Wild Boys

The Wild Boys (1971)

Way, Personality

“We will have to learn to lead people rather then to contain them.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), p. 30

People

“I believe that the Durbar, more than any event in modern history, showed to the Indian people the path which, under the guidance of Providence, they are treading, taught the Indian Empire its unity, and impressed the world with its moral as well as material force. It will not be forgotten. The sound of the trumpets has already died away; the captains and the kings have departed; but the effect produced by this overwhelmingly display of unity and patriotism is still alive and will not perish. Everywhere it is known that upon the throne of the East is seated a power that has made of the sentiments, the aspirations, and the interests of 300 millions of Asiatics a living thing, and the units in that great aggregation have learned that in their incorporation lies their strength. As a disinterested spectator of the Durbar remarked, Not until to-day did I realise that the destinies of the East still lie, as they always have done, in the hollow of India’s hand. I think, too, that the Durbar taught the lesson not only of power but of duty. There was not an officer of Government there present, there was not a Ruling Prince nor a thoughtful spectator, who must not at one moment or other have felt that participation in so great a conception carried with it responsibility as well as pride, and that he owed something in return for whatever of dignity or security or opportunity the Empire had given him.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Budget Speech (25 March 1903), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898-1905 (London: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 308-309.

People, Lie, World, History

“Evolutionary game theory is one of the most active and rapidly growing areas of research in economics. Unlike traditional game theory models, which assume that all players are fully rational and have complete knowledge of details of the game, evolutionary models assume that people choose their strategies through a trial-and-error learning process in which they gradually discover that some strategies work better than others. In games that are repeated many times, low-payoff strategies tend to be weeded out, and an equilibrium may emerge.”

Larry Samuelson (1953) American economist

Larry Samuelson. Evolutionary Games and Equilibrium Selection. 1997. Overview.

People, Error, Game, Knowledge

“It is not enough to "have" free speech. People must learn to speak freely. Noam Chomsky remarked in the sixties about the short-life ultra-radicals on campus who thought that Marx should have been burning down the British Museum rather than writing and thinking in it. The less political descendants of that faction have now tried to reduce life to a system of empowerment etiquette, and have wasted a lot of their own time and everyone else's in the process. But the real bridle on our tongues is imposed by the everyday lying and jargon, sanctioned and promulgated at the highest levels of media and politics, and not by the awkward handful who imagine themselves revolutionaries.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Politically Correct" (1991).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

Life, People, Imagination, Lying

“The local rock group down the street
Is trying hard to learn their song.
They serenade the weekend squire
Who just came out to mow his lawn.
Another pleasant valley Sunday.
Charcoal burning everywhere.
Rows of houses that are all the same.
And no one seems to care.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Pleasant Valley Sunday (1967), co-written with Gerry Goffin, recorded by The Monkees
Song lyrics, Singles

Housing

“Poor Naz. He wanted everything to be perfect, neat, wanted all matter organized and filed away so that it wasn't mess. He had to learn too: matter's what makes us alive—the bitty flow, the scar tissue, signature of the world's very first disaster and promissory note guaranteeing its last. Try to iron it out at your peril.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 16.

World, Perfection

“She said, "I wanna learn a love song full of happy things."
She said, "I wanna learn a love song; won't you let me hear you sing?"
She said, "I wanna learn a love song, I wanna hear you play."
She said, "I wanna learn a love song before you go away."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

I Wanna Learn a Love Song
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Love, Happiness, Singing

“Are the solutions offered us always to be too late? Shall we in Great Britain invite three-quarters of the world, including the whole of our Empire, to join with us in evolving a new currency system which shall be stable in terms of commodities? Or would the gold standard countries be interested to learn the terms, which must needs be strict, on which we should be prepared to re-enter the system of a drastically reformed gold standard?”

John Maynard Keynes book Essays in Persuasion

Essays in Persuasion (1931), The End of Gold Standard (1931)

World, Country

“Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of painful thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Phantastes (1858)

Life, Pain, Lie, Way

“I say, let’s learn more and then speculate.”

Vernor Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep (1st edition)

Source: A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), Chapter 12 (p. 122).

“Writing the book (The Hottest State) had to do with dropping out of college, and with being an actor. I didn't want my whole life to go by and not do anything but recite lines. I wanted to try making something else. It was definitely the scariest thing I ever did. And a huge learning experience about how not everybody's going to like you, or like what you do. And you have to ask yourself, is it worthwhile? Or am I just doing it to be liked? And it was just one of the best things I ever did. The second book (Ash Wednesday) was so much more fun because of that. The first was just a novelty act, like, 'The kid from Reality Bites wrote a book? Who does he think he is?”

Ethan Hawke (1970) American actor and writer

And I understand that. The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/oct/08/features.fiction (2005-10-08) 2005&ndash;2009

Life, Books, Understanding, Thinking

“All stress inhibits true and effective learning.”

Michel Thomas (1914–2005) American linguist and language teacher

Speak French with Michel Thomas, Disc 1

“Print also created new literary forms and altered ideas of literary style. Medieval poetry was conceived for the ear, and each poem had to stand the test of recitation. In addition, medieval audiences were not always interested in the poet himself, since his work was known to them only through the interpretations of minstrels, who frequently rephrased poems to suit their own image and images. The printed page changed these conditions. Slowly, the printed poet came into a new relationship with his reader. He learned not to be so repetitive as his predecessors since a reader could be depended upon to return as often as needed to uncompromised passages. …After the flowering of dramatic poetry during the Elizabethan Age, the printed page substituted for the theater, and millions of children came to know Shakespeare only through this form.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)

Children, Age, Flowers, Idea

“History often repeats itself. If we can learn our lessons early, we can avoid accidents. The purpose of the investigation is not to blame someone for the neglect of duty or to hold someone responsible, but to figure out the real causes for the accidents and avoid making the same mistakes again.”

Chang Yu-hern (1954) Taiwanese politician

Chang Yu-hern (2010) cited in: " NCKU Prof. Yu-Hern Chang Appointed as Chairman of Aviation Safety Council http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/03/idUS84305+03-Jun-2010+BW20100603" in Reuters, 3 June 2010.

History

“And there will be, and will ever remain, an impassable gulf between the religious consciousness and the logical, unless the logical consciousness reaches up to embrace the religious, and learns to state the absolute Is in terms of the absolute Ought.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The City of God and the True God as its Head (In Royce’s “The Conception of God: a Philosophical Discussion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality”), p.124

“The evidence of evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy (Darwin's chief sources), but from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences. To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write. Doubts about the power of Darwin's idea of natural selection to explain this evolutionary process are still intellectually respectable, however, although the burden of proof for such skepticism has become immense…”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Life, People, World, Idea

“Very late in life, when he was studying geometry, some one said to Lacydes, "Is it then a time for you to be learning now?"”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

"If it is not," he replied, "when will it be?"
Lacydes, 5.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 4: The Academy

Life, Study, Time

“This article [entitled A framework for the comparative analysis of organizations], was one of three independent statements in 1967 of what came to be called "contingency theory." It held that the structure of an organization depends upon (is ‘contingent’ upon) the kind of task performed, rather than upon some universal principles that apply to all organizations. The notion was in the wind at the time.
I think we were all convinced we had a breakthrough, and in some respects we did — there was no one best way of organizing; bureaucracy was efficient for some tasks and inefficient for others; top managers tried to organize departments (research, production) in the same way when they should have different structures; organizational comparisons of goals, output, morale, growth, etc., should control for types of technologies; and so on. While my formulation grew out of fieldwork, my subsequent research offered only modest support for it. I learned that managers had other ends to maximize than efficient production and they sometimes sacrificed efficiency for political and personal ends.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Charles Perrow, in "This Week’s Citation Classic." in: CC, Nr. 14. April 6, 1981 (online at garfield.library.upenn.edu)
Comment:
The other two 1967 publications were Paul R. Lawrence & Jay W. Lorsch. Organization and environment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967, and James D. Thompson. Organizations in action. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.
1980s and later

Way, Support, Thinking, Universe

“We used to think that secrecy was perhaps the greatest enemy of democracy, and as long as there was no suppression or censorship, people could be trusted to make the informed decisions that would preserve our free society, but we have learned in recent years that the techniques of misinformation and misdirection have become so refined that, even in an open society, a cleverly directed flood of misinformation can overwhelm the truth, even though the truth is out there, uncensored, quietly available to anyone who can find it.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

People, Truth, Democracy, Thinking

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Russell Brand - The Guardian (2013)

People

“I do not think the coerced mind ever really learns an art.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 3 (p. 20)

Art, Thinking

“I have always found it a little strange that the majority of schools are utilizing filters. It seems to me that this is the environment where filters would not be used because the students are so carefully monitored, the activities in which they engage all go toward the same goals of education, and this is the very place where young people should be learning about information and its uses, in other words, where they should be learning information literacy.A recent National Research Center report, commissioned by Congress, clearly stated that information and media literacy are the most important things we can teach our children in order to truly protect them. Instead of placing barriers around the swimming pool, we must teach children to swim. We must teach children to find and use accurate information.”

Judith Krug (1940–2009) librarian and freedom of speech proponent

"Children's Internet Protection Act" http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/02/washtech_policy060302.htm by Brian Krebs, The Washington Post (June 3, 2002 )

Children, People, Education, School

“India is a country of empty words, not action. Only repeating, 'Mera Bharat Mahaan' won't help. Learn to finish the race first in order to finish first.”

N. R. Narayana Murthy (1946) Indian businessman

Narayana Murthy shocks with 'Mera Bharat Mahaan' quote, indicates Infosys Ltd on hiring spree, 16k jobs on offer

Help, Country

“Sweetie, if I’ve learned anything during my ten years at sea, it’s this. Never confuse your captain with God.”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 4, “Dirge” (p. 74)

God, Sea

“Many years ago I used to read books like, for example, Ernest Thompson Seton's Lives of Game Animals to learn about animal behavior. But after a certain point, after living in the woods for a while, I developed an aversion to reading any scientific accounts. In some sense reading what the professional biologists said about wildlife ruined or contaminated it for me. What began to matter to me was the knowledge I acquired about wildlife through personal experience.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

in Defining Danger: American Assassins and the New Domestic Terrorists
Interviews

Books, Behavior, Game, Knowledge

“There are no excuses for my extremist past, for the suffering I caused to loved ones, to family, to friends, to those many more, those far more, 'unknown others' who were or who became the 'enemies' posited by some extremist ideology. No excuses because the extremism, the intolerance, the hatred, the violence, the inhumanity, the prejudice were mine; my responsibility, born from and expressive of my character; and because the discovery of, the learning of, the need to live, to regain, my humanity arose because of and from others and not because of me. Thus what exposed my hubris - what for me broke down that certitude-of-knowing which extremism breeds and re-presents - was not something I did; not something I achieved; not something related to my character, my nature, at all. Instead, it was a gift offered to me by two others - the legacy left by their tragic early dying. That it took not one but two personal tragedies - some thirteen years apart - for me to accept and appreciate the gift of their love, their living, most surely reveals my failure, the hubris that for so long suffused me, and the strength and depth of my so lamentable extremism.”

David Myatt (1950) British writer

Source: Pathei-Mathos – Genesis of My Unknowing (2012) http://www.davidmyatt.info/genesis-of-my-unknowing.html

Love, Family, Failure, Nature

“I finally learned from Fred Durst, who is [of] my generation, that "selling out" means every ticket at The Forum got sold. I don't think Britney [Spears] and Christina [Aguilera] sit there agonizing over their record sales. The [term] "sell out" needs to be eradicated from the language, because if you don't "sell out," guess what? An asshole will.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On the notion of "selling out" in the music industry, 24 Hours of Love MTV2 Special (21 September 2005)
1996–2005

Thinking

“Mentorship is a two-way street. While I was learning from them [brilliant mentors] - and their years of experience and expertise - what I was giving back was equally important. I brought fresh insights and new perspectives to their thinking.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

" Speech at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-blank/nyu-commencement-speech-2_b_10114910.html," at huffingtonpost.com, posted 05/24/2016.

Way, Thinking

“The price of training is always a certain "trained incapacity": the more we know how to do something, the harder it is to learn to do it differently.”

Abraham Kaplan (1918–1993) American philosopher

Source: "The Conduct of Inquiry", p. 29.

Training

“Get out of the boat. Face your fears. Fail. Learn. Adjust. Try again. And watch God do more than you can imagine.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

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

God, Fear, Imagination

“There is no question that the adult caregivers play an important role in the baby's life. It is from these older people that babies learn their first language, have their first experiences in forming and maintaining relationships, and get their first lessons in following rules. But the socialization researchers go on to draw other conclusions: that what children learn in the early years about relationships and rules sets the pattern for later relationships and later rule-following, and hence determines the entire course of their lives. I used to think so too. I still believe that children need to learn about relationships and rules in their early years; it is also important that they acquire a language. But I no longer believe that this early learning, which in our society generally takes place within the home, sets the pattern for what is to follow. Although the learning itself serves a purpose, the content of what children learn may be irrelevant to the world outside their home. They may cast it off when they step outside as easily as the dorky sweater their mother made them wear.”

Judith Rich Harris book The Nurture Assumption

The Nurture Assumption, chapter 1. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/harris-nurture.html

Life, Children, People, World

“You may call me doctor. You won't, of course. You'll call me damned Jew, a Christ murderer, a secret worshipper of pigs and a kidnapper of Christian children. How absurd! Who would want to kidnap children, Christian or otherwise? Vile things. The only mercy of children is that they grow up, as my son has but then, tragically, they beget more children. We do not learn lifes lessons.”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

Doctor Mordecai
The Grail Quest, The Archer's Tale/Harlequin (2000)

Life, Children, Secret, Christ

“Perfect contemplatives hear without astonishment all that the learned propound since they excel in a science transcending all understanding.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

Understanding, Science, Perfection

“Every day, you have the power to choose our better history — by opening your hearts and minds, by speaking up for what you know is right, by sharing the lessons of Brown versus Board of Education, the lessons you learned right here in Topeka, wherever you go for the rest of your lives.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Quoted on Yahoo News!, "First lady tells Kansas students to fight bias" (16 May 2014) http://news.yahoo.com/first-lady-tells-kansas-students-fight-bias-021747701.html 2010s

Education, History, Heart

“[Robert Lowell] is a poet of both Will and Imagination, but his Will is always seizing his Imagination by the shoulders and saying to it in a grating voice: “Don’t sit there fooling around; get to work!” — and his poor Imagination gets tense all over and begins to revolve determinedly and familiarly, like a squirrel in a squirrel-cage. Goethe talked about the half-somnambulistic state of the poet; but Mr. Lowell too often is either having a nightmare or else is wide awake gritting his teeth and working away at All The Things He Does Best. Cocteau said to poets: Learn what you can do and then don’t do it; and this is so—we do it enough without trying. As a poet Mr. Lowell sometimes doesn’t have enough trust in God and tries to do everything himself: he proposes and disposes — and this helps to give a certain monotony to his work.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Three Books”, p. 236
Poetry and the Age (1953)

God, Fools, Imagination, Help

“It lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of educational and other arrangements for several centuries back, to consider human talent as best of all evincing itself by the faculty of eloquent speech. Our earliest schoolmasters teach us, as the one gift of culture they have, the art of spelling and pronouncing, the rules of correct speech; rhetorics, logics follow, sublime mysteries of grammar, whereby we may not only speak but write. And onward to the last of our schoolmasters in the highest university, it is still intrinsically grammar, under various figures grammar. To speak in various languages, on various things, but on all of them to speak, and appropriately deliver ourselves by tongue or pen,—this is the sublime goal towards which all manner of beneficent preceptors and learned professors, from the lowest hornbook upwards, are continually urging and guiding us.”

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

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

Education, Art, Universe