Quotes about learning
page 53

Richard Feynman photo
Cesar Chavez photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Jean-François Lyotard photo
Boutros Boutros-Ghali photo

“The lesson I learned in Cairo still applies. The only way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence.”

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016) 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Statement of 1993, as quoted in The Coming Plague : Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance (1995) by Laurie Garrett, p. 592, and in Preventive Diplomacy : Stopping Wars before they Start (1996) by Kevin M. Cahill, p. 254
1990s

Samuel Bowles photo
Mau Piailug photo
A. R. Rahman photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Isn't this the prettiest little thing you've ever seen? It was over a year ago I held this belt high in the air after I fought for it for the first time in Dayton, Ohio against Samoa Joe and I proclaimed this belt the most important thing to me. Right now, in my hands, as of this day 6/18/05, THIS becomes the most important belt in the world! This belt in the hands of any other man is just a belt, but in my hands it becomes power. Just like this microphone in the hands of any of the boys in the back is just a microphone, but in the hands of a dangerous man like myself it becomes a pipe-bomb. These words that I speak spoken by anybody else are just words strung loosely together to form sentences. What I say I mean, and what I mean I say, and they become anthems! You see, if I could be afforded the time here a little bit of a story. There was once an old man, walking home from work. He was walking in the snow, and he stumbled upon a snake frozen in the ice. He took that snake, and he brought it home, and he took care of it, and he thawed it out, and he nursed it back to health. And as soon as that snake was well enough, it bit the old man. And as the old man lay there dying he asked the snake, 'Why? I took care of you. I loved you. I saved your life.' And that snake looked that man right in the eye and said, 'You stupid old man. I'm a snake.' The greatest thing the devil ever did was make you people believe he didn't exist… and you're looking at him right now! I AM THE DEVIL HIMSELF! And all of you stupid, mindless people fell for it! You all believed in the same make-believe superhero that the legendary Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat saw some year ago today. No, you see, you don't know anything. You followed me hook-line and sinker, all of you did, and I'm not mad at you… I just feel sorry for you. This belongs to me! Everything you see here belongs to me, and I did what I had to do to get my hands on this. Now I am the GREATEST PRO WRESTLER walkin' the Earth today! This is my stage, this is my theater, you are my puppets! When I pulled those marionette strings, and I moved your emotions, and I played with them, and honestly it's 'cause I get off on it. I hate each and every single one of you with a thousand burns and I will not stop… I will not stop until I prove that I am better than you, that I am better than Low Ki, that I am better than AJ Styles! I'm better than Samoa Joe. Ladies and gentlemen, the champ is here! You don't have to love it, but you better learn to accept it. 'Cause I'm taking this with me, and there's not a single person in that locker room that can stop me!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Ring of Honor, Death Before Dishonor III. June 18th, 2005.
This promo took place directly after Punk defeated Austin Aries for the ROH World Championship proceeding to turn the, at the time face, Punk heel. Directly after this promo Christopher Daniels made his first appearance in ROH in over a year to challenge for the belt. This promo also made reference to an old parable http://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/scorpion.htm about an animal doing an act of kindness to another creature that is venomous and being surprised when the animal injects the venom to the creature after the act of kindness who then proceeds to explain it is their nature to perform the act.
Ring of Honor

David Allen photo

“I've never had to go very far to learn everything I have learned. I just had to care about something & pay attention.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

19 January 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/7933461617
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Max Tegmark photo
Rani Mukerji photo
Mary Parker Follett photo
Kimberly Elise photo
William Hazlitt photo

“If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Ignorance of the Learned"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Roberto Clemente photo
Robert Sheckley photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
Andrea Dworkin photo

“(On prostitution:) Incest is boot camp. Incest is where you send the girl to learn how to do it. So you don't, obviously, have to send her anywhere, she's already there and she's got nowhere else to go. She's trained. And the training is specific and it is important: not to have any real boundaries to her own body; to know that she's valued only for sex; to learn about men what the offender, the sex offender, is teaching her.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

"Prostitution and Male Supremacy" http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/MichLawJourI.html (1993), Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 1(1):1–12. Reprinted in Life and Death (1997), p 139–51.
Often paraphrased as "Incest is boot camp for prostitution".

Seymour Papert photo
Robert Frost photo

“Unless I'm wrong
I but obey
The urge of a song:
I'm—bound—away!

And I may return
If dissatisfied
With what I learn
From having died.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"Away!" (1962), st. 5,6
General sources

Sri Aurobindo photo

“Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

John A. Eddy photo
Kent Hovind photo
Angela Davis photo
Miley Cyrus photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“Every cook must learn to rule the State.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

As quoted in Woman's Place by Florence Becker, in New International, Vol. 2 No. 5 (August 1935), pp.175-176; also in Woman in Soviet Russia (1935) by Fannina W. Halle.
Attributions

Philip Kotler photo

“The good news is that marketing takes a day to learn. The bad news is that it takes a lifetime to master!”

Philip Kotler (1931) American marketing author, consultant and professor

Source: Marketing Insights from A to Z: 80 Concepts Every Manager Needs to Know, 2011, p. xiv

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“Thus they are destitute of that very lovely and exquisitely natural friendship, which is an object of desire in itself and for itself, nor can they learn from themselves how valuable and powerful such a friendship is. For each man loves himself, not that he may get from himself some reward for his own affection, but because each one is of himself dear to himself. And unless this same feeling be transferred to friendship, a true friend will never be found; for a true friend is one who is, as it were, a second self.”
Ita pulcherrima illa et maxime naturali carent amicitia per se et propter se expetita nec ipsi sibi exemplo sunt, haec vis amicitiae et qualis et quanta sit. Ipse enim se quisque diligit, non ut aliquam a se ipse mercedem exigat caritatis suae, sed quod per se sibi quisque carus est. Quod nisi idem in amicitiam transferetur, verus amicus numquam reperietur; est enim is qui est tamquam alter idem.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Section 80; translation by J. F. Stout
Laelius De Amicitia – Laelius On Friendship (44 BC)

Vladimir Putin photo

“People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don't want to learn it themselves.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

MUNICH, February 10, 2007. http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/02/a50c8a12-b6a8-44ad-92dd-58183e78a032.html
2006- 2010

Indra Nooyi photo

“As a CEO, I am finding that I have to become a learning CEO. I have to go to school all the time because I am learning new skills that I need to run this company and I am realising that I am not equipped to just coast, I have to constantly renew my skills.”

Indra Nooyi (1955) Indian-born, naturalized American, business executive

Quoted in A Learning CEO Can Power Through Tough Times: Indra Nooyi, 5 December 2013, 18 December 2013, Forbes India http://forbesindia.com/article/real-issue/a-learning-ceo-can-power-through-tough-times-indra-nooyi/36641/1,

Robert Kraft (astronomer) photo

“Self-study, in a sense of learning by yourself without anybody teaching you anything, has an enormous value.”

Robert Kraft (astronomer) (1927–2015) American astronomer

Interview of Robert Kraft by Patrick McCray on August 1-2, 2002 http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/25490.html, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Tzipi Livni photo

“Economics takes a while to learn, even if much of it is in a way quite simple. It is simple to be wrong as well as to be right, and it is none too easy to distinguish between them.”

James Mirrlees (1936–2018) Scottish economist

James Mirrlees in: Anders Barany, ‎Nobelstiftelsen (1996). Les Prix Nobel. p. 353

Robert Jordan photo

“We know from experience that technology can be changed. We have learned in the quality-of-working-life enterprise not to accept the technological imperative.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Eric Trist cited in: Alternatives. Vol 8 (1980). Trent University, University of Waterloo. Faculty of Environmental Studies, p. 146

Margaret Thatcher photo
Joshua Jackson photo
David Attenborough photo
David Brin photo
Gottfried Leibniz photo
James Macpherson photo
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis photo
George Hendrik Breitner photo

“I learned from Nol that nowadays you [ Willem Witsen ] are especially engaged upon enlargements [of photos]. I would like to ask you if you perhaps have a piece of moorland (foreground) for me, I would be very grateful to you. Because I am working on a painting with a large foreground. You may have seen it, with that artillery in it. It must be a simple sloping ground. Without much frills of sand - etc. nothing but heather..”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik vernam van Nol dat ge u tegenwoordig speciaal bezig houdt met vergrootingen [van foto's]. Ik zou je wel willen vragen als je soms een stuk heidegrond (voorgrond). voor me had, zou ik je zeer dankbaar zijn. Ik ben naml. aan een schilderij bezig met groote voorgrond. je hebt het misschien wel gezien, met die artillerie er op. Het moet een eenvoudig opglooiende grond [zijn]. Zonder veel tierelantijntjes van zand – etc niets anders dan heide..
In a letter of Breitner to Willem Witsen, undated, c. 1893-99; in the collection Royal Dutch Library, the Hague; as cited in master-thesis Van Gogh en Breitner in Den Haag, Helewise Berger, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, p. 48
The two artists exchanged sometimes photos, using them as elements for their paintings
1890 - 1900

John Banville photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Tony Blair photo

“I thought that it was the most predictable speech that we could have heard from the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He may want to pose as the nice Dr. Jekyll, but we know that, deep down, he is still the same old Mr. Howard.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Hansard http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo031126/debtext/31126-05.htm#31126-05_spnew2, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 415, col. 23.
Debate on the Queen's Speech, 26 November, 2003.
2000s

Aaron Sorkin photo

“People who don't know anything tend to make up fake rules, the real rules being considerably more difficult to learn.”

Aaron Sorkin (1961) American screenwriter, producer, playwright

The West Wing Script Book: Volume 1, Introduction.

Irene Dunne photo
Chris Hedges photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Jane Wagner photo

“I swear people don't want sex so much as they want somebody who'll listen to 'em … the first thing you learn after fellatio is how to listen.”

Jane Wagner (1935) Playwright, actress

The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)

Meher Baba photo
Daniel T. Gilbert photo
Susan Kay photo
Christopher Monckton photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Jose Peralta photo

“Learning science means learning to talk science… Talking science means observing, describing, comparing, classifying, analysing, discussing, hypothesizing, theorizing, questioning, challenging, arguing, designing experiments, following procedures, judging, evaluating, deciding, concluding, generalizing, reporting … in and through the language of science.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 1; as cited in: Bernard Laplante, "Teaching science to language minority students in elementary classrooms." NYSABE Journal 12 (1997): 62-83.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Jim Butcher photo
Russell L. Ackoff photo

“Doing philosophy was an opportunity to learn something new. I expected this to be an adjunct to my practice of architecture. But it turned out the other way. It turned out that the philosophy of science gave me the opportunity to design social systems, and I was more interested in people-oriented systems than in buildings. They were both design, but different kinds of design. I like creating things.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Ackoff cited in: Carole Novak (2000) " Interview with Russell L. Ackoff http://www.ait.net/technos/tq_09/3ackoff.php". in: Technos Quartely. Fall 2000 Vol. 9 No. 3. This quote is the answer to the question, why Ackoff switched from architecture to philosophy in his graduate studies.
2000s

Richard Feynman photo
Yoshida Shoin photo
Simon Hill photo

“Did you know that Dimitar Berbatov learned how to speak english through the Godfather films…it was a offer he couldn't refuse”

Simon Hill (1967) Australian television presenter

from a "In the know" section on Manchester United
Quotes from His time at Foxsports

Ernest Hemingway photo
Rashi photo

“We learn from here the humility of the Holy One, Blessed is He. Since man is in the likeness of the angels, and they would be jealous of him, for this reason, He consulted them.”

Rashi (1040–1105) French rabbi and commentator

Commenting on Gen. 1:26; why does it say "Let us make man"?
Commentary on Genesis

Steve Jobs photo
Akio Morita photo
Richard Francis Burton photo

“So much to learn!
Old Nature's ways
Of glee and gloom with rapt amaze
To study, probe, and paint – brown earth,
Salt sea, blue heavens, their tilth and dearth,
Birds, grasses, trees – the natural things
That throb or grope or poise on wings.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

Richard Eugene Burton, Memorial Day, And Other Poems (1897), 'So Much to Learn', p. 8
Misattributed

“They haven’t learned that being penitent sometimes does no good at all.”

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 16 (p. 374)

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Bill Downs photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“But let the working man be on his guard against another danger. We live at a time when there is a disposition to think that the Government ought to do this and that and that the Government ought to do everything. There are things which the Government ought to do, I have no doubt. In former periods the Government have neglected much, and possibly even now they neglect something; but there is a danger on the other side. If the Government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received or all the advantages that would accrue from them. The essence of the whole thing is that the spirit of self-reliance, the spirit of true and genuine manly independence, should be preserved in the minds of the people, in the minds of the masses of the people, in the mind of every member of the class. If he loses his self-denial, if he learns to live in a craven dependence upon wealthier people rather than upon himself, you may depend upon it he incurs mischief for which no compensation can be made.”

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

Speech at the opening of the Reading and Recreation Rooms erected by the Saltney Literary Institute at Saltney in Chesire (26 October 1889), as quoted in "Mr. Gladstone On The Working Classes" in The Times (28 October 1889), p. 8
1880s

Douglas Coupland photo
Dana Gioia photo
Stephen Miller photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“Late, I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

“The national park idea, the best idea we ever had, was inevitable as soon as Americans learned to confront the wild continent not with fear and cupidity but with delight, wonder, and awe.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

"The Best Idea We Ever Had" Marking the Sparrow's Fall: The Making of the American West, page 137

Booker T. Washington photo

“I think I have learned that the best way to lift one's self up is to help someone else.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

The Story of My Life and Work, vol. I (1900), ch. XV: Cuban Education and the Chicago Peace Jubilee Address http://web.archive.org/20071031084035/www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.1/html/126.html

Susie Castillo photo

“I've been an animal lover all my life, and the more I learned of the torture that animals go through in the name of fashion, I just think it's so unnecessary; it's unbelievable to me. I’m blessed to team up with my pageant sisters to take a united stand and to tell the pageant industry not to support the fur industry.”

Susie Castillo (1979) MTV VJ, Miss USA 2003

"Miss Universe official promises surprises that could shake up the whole show", LasVegasSun.com (13 June 2013) https://m.lasvegassun.com/vegasdeluxe/2013/jun/13/miss-nevada-official-promises-surprises-could-shak/.

Mary Parker Follett photo
Daniel Levitin photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Amir Taheri photo