Quotes about learning
page 54

“Keynes is dead; dynamic programming; Keynes is still dead. That’s the way Stanford graduate economics students recently summed up what they had learned in their core graduate macroeconomics course.”

David Colander (1947) American economist

David Colander, "The Keynesian Method, Complexity, and the Training of Economists" (2009)
2000s

Nagarjuna photo
Robert Louis Stevenson photo
John Davies (poet) photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
Andrei Tarkovsky photo
Russell Crowe photo

“A guy like Hando is abhorrent to me— the philosophy that governs his life is something that disgusts me completely— so that was an interesting learning experience.”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

On playing a neo-Nazi skinhead in one of his earliest roles.
GQ Interview (2005)

Musa al-Kadhim photo

“Association with a learned one in the slums, is by far better than sitting with an ignorant person on sumptuous and luxurious carpets.”

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

Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol.1, p. 48.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

David Crystal photo
John Horgan (journalist) photo
Confucius photo

“There is the love of knowing without the love of learning; the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Book XVII, Chapter VIII.
Source: The Analects, Other chapters

Elizabeth Bibesco photo

“We learn nothing by being right.”

Elizabeth Bibesco (1897–1945) writer, actress; Romanian princess

Haven (1951)

Lewis Pugh photo

“As a pioneer swimmer, you've got to be willing to fail and try again. The point isn’t to learn to fail, the point is to learn to bounce back.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Website

Cesar Chavez photo
Chelsea Clinton photo

“Don't be afraid of your past. Learn from it so it can empower your present.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 35

Mukesh Ambani photo
Saul D. Alinsky photo
C. N. R. Rao photo
Christian Scriver photo

“The whole of Christianity is comprised in three things— to believe, to love, and to obey Jesus. These are things, however, which we must be learning all our life.”

Christian Scriver (1629–1693) German hymnwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 134.

Henry George photo
Sinclair Lewis photo
Werner Erhard photo

“Of all the disciplines that I studied, practiced, learned, Zen was the essential one. It was not so much an influence on me, rather it created space. It allowed those things that were there to be there. It gave some form to my experience. And it built up in me the critical mass from which was kindled the experience that produced est.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 121, 0-517-53502-5]

Jane Roberts photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Bertolt Brecht photo

“The main objective is to learn to think crudely. Crude thinking is the great one’s thinking.”

Dreigroschenroman (1934), reprinted in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967), 916.

Mortimer J. Adler photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Huldrych Zwingli photo

“Within a few days I will go to the papal Legate [Pucci], and if he shall open a conversation on the subject as he did before, I will urge him to warn the Pope not to issue an excommunication [against Luther], for which I think would be greatly against him [the Pope]. For if it be issued I believe the Germans will equally despise the Pope and the excommunication. But do you be of good cheer, for our day will not lack those who will teach Christ faithfully, and who will give up their lives for Him willingly, even though among men their names shall not be in good repute after this life…So far as I am concerned I look for all evil from all of them: I mean both ecclesiastics and laymen. I beseech Christ for this one thing only, that He will enable me to endure all things courageously, and that He break me as a potter's vessel or make me strong, as it pleased Him. If I be excommunicated I shall think of the learned and holy Hilary, who was exiled from France to Africa, and of Lucius, who though driven from his seat at Rome returned again with great honour. Not that I compare myself with them: for as they were better than i so they suffered what was a greater ignominy. And yet if it were good to flory I would rejoice to suffer insult for the name of Christ. But let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Lately I have read scarcely any thing of Luther's; but what I have seen of his hitherto does not seem to me to stray from gospel teaching. You know - if you rememeber - that what I have always spoken of in terms of the highest commendation in him is that he supports his position with authoritative witness.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

As cited in Huldreich Zwingli, the Reformer of German Switzerland, 1484-1531 by Samuel Macauley Jackson, John Martin Vincent, Frank Hugh Foster, p.148-149

Henry Gantt photo
Newton Lee photo

“We are trying to understand the implications of quantum mechanics. The subject is very old, but we are still learning.”

Leonard Mandel (1927–2001) German physicist

as quoted by John Hogan, in Quantum Philosophy, Scientific American (July 1992)

Myron Tribus photo
Harry Chapin photo
Harry Schwarz photo
Gerd Binnig photo

“Doing physics is much more enjoyable than just learning it. Maybe 'doing it' is the right way of learning, at least as far as I am concerned.”

Gerd Binnig (1947) German physicist

in his Nobel biography, edited by [Tore Frängsmyr, Gösta Ekspong, Nobelstiftelsen, Physics 1981-1990, World Scientific, 1993, 9810207298, 383]

William H. Seward photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo

“[Sultan Firoz Tughlaq] convened a meeting of the learned Ulama and renowned Mashaikh and suggested to them that an error had been committed: the Jiziyah had never been levied from Brahmans: they had been held excused, in former reigns. The Brahmans were the very keys of the chamber of idolatry, and the infidels were dependent on them (kalid-i-hujra-i-kufr und va kafiran bar ishan muataqid und). They ought therefore to be taxed first. The learned lawyers gave it as their opinion that the Brahmans ought to be taxed. The Brahmans then assembled and went to the Sultan and represented that they had never before been called upon to pay the Jiziyah, and they wanted to know why they were now subjected to the indignity of having to pay it. They were determined to collect wood and to burn themselves under the walls of the palace rather than pay the tax. When these pleasant words (kalimat-i-pur naghmat) were reported to the Sultan, he replied that they might burn and destroy themselves at once for they would not escape from the payment. The Brahmans remained fasting for several days at the palace until they were on the point of death. The Hindus of the city then assembled and told the Brahmans that it was not right to kill themselves on account of the Jiziyah, and that they would undertake to pay it for them. In Delhi, the Jiziyah was of three kinds: Ist class, forty tankahs; 2nd class, twenty tankahs; 3rd class, ten tankahs. When the Brahmans found their case was hopeless, they went to the Sultan and begged him in his mercy to reduce the amount they would have to pay, and he accordingly assessed it at ten tankahs and fifty jitals for each individual.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Shams Siraj Afif, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n381/mode/2up

Adrianne Wadewitz photo

“One of the things about Adrianne I was always grateful for was that she always wanted to learn and experience more things in the world. She was very thoughtful and interested. She loved literature and reading.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Molly Vetter, friend of Wadewitz — quoted in: Wetzel, Diane. (April 23, 2014). "NP grad, Wikipedia editor dies in Calif." http://www.nptelegraph.com/news/np-grad-wikipedia-editor-dies-in-calif/article_c7be4462-ab39-53ad-b3e8-9055b51d3bdf.html NPTelegraph.com. North Platte, Nebraska. — and: Wetzel, Diane (April 23, 2014). "North Platte grad, 37, Wikipedia editor, dies in climbing fall" http://www.omaha.com/article/20140423/NEWS/140429478/1707. Omaha World-Herald (Omaha, Nebraska).
About

Honoré de Balzac photo

“Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life’s duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Ah! combien de choses un enfant apprend à sa mère. Il y a tant de promesses faites entre nous et la vertu dans cette protection incessante due à un être faible, que la femme n’est dans sa véritable sphère que quand elle est mère; elle déploie alors seulement ses forces, elle pratique les devoirs de sa vie, elle en a tous les bonheurs et tous les plaisirs.
Part I, ch. XXXI.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Anacreon photo

“Whence can we the future learn?
Life to mortals is obscure.”

Anacreon (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns

Odes, XXXVIII. (XXXVL), 19.

Viktor Schauberger photo

“You must learn to think one octave higher. Only then will you learn how implosion energy works.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Implosion Magazine, No. 83, p. 27 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

which they do not control
Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d5aa24e-23a4-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1, Financial Times, 2009-04-07.
Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world (2009)

“I have learned one thing: not to look down
Too much upon the damned.”

Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) English poet and professor

Ovid in the Third Reich
Poetry

Alois Hába photo

“Myself not ignorant of woe,
Compassion I have learned to show.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book I, p. 31

“Wisdom never comes to those who believe they have nothing left to learn.”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

“The Forest is Crying”, p. 62
The Ivory and the Horn (1996)

William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper photo

“I should have all manner of tenderness for the right of the College; they are nurseries of Religion and Learning, and therefore all donations for increase and augmentation of their revenue are to be liberally expounded.”

William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper (1665–1723) English politician and first Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Devit v. College of Dublin (1720). Gilbert Eq. Ca. 248; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 242.

Milo Yiannopoulos photo
Walker Percy photo
Shaun Ellis photo
Gene Wolfe photo

“Every so often I get optimistic and explain the best method of learning to write for students. I don't believe any of them has ever tried it.”

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

The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009), afterword to "The Boy Who Hooked the Sun", p. 381
Nonfiction

James A. Michener photo
Aneurin Bevan photo

“I have spent now more than a quarter of a century of my life in public affairs, and as I grow older I become more and more pessimistic. I started-if the House will forgive me this personal note - my career in public affairs in a small colliery town in South Wales. When I was quite a young boy my father took me down the street and showed me one or two portly and complacent looking gentlemen standing at the shop doors, and, pointing to one, he said, "Very important man. That's Councillor Jackson. He's a very important man in this town." I said, "What's the Council?" "Oh, that's the place that governs the affairs of this town," said my father. "Very important place indeed, and they are very powerful men." When I got older I said to myself, "The place to get to is the council. That's where the power is." So I worked very hard, and, in association with my fellows, when I was about 20 years of age, I got on to the council. I discovered when I got there that the power had been there, but it had just gone. So I made some inquiries, being an earnest student of social affairs, and I learned that the power had slipped down to the county council. That was as where it was, and where it had gone to. So I worked very hard again, and I got there-and it had gone from there too. Then I found out that it had come up here. So I followed it, and sure enough I found that it had been here, but I just saw its coat tails round the corner.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Hansard, House of Commons 5th series, vol 395, columns 1616-1617.
Speech in the House of Commons, 15 December 1943.
1940s

Julien Offray de La Mettrie photo
B. W. Powe photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Tobin Bell photo
José Rizal photo
Confucius photo

“The superior man, extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, may thus likewise not overstep what is right.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects, Chapter VI

Will Cuppy photo
John Wooden photo
Bono photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Frank Stella photo

“The paintings got sculptural because the forms got more complicated. I've learned to weave in and out.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1971 - 2000, Bomb: X Motion Picture and Center for New Art Activities, 2000, p. 28.

Anastacia photo

“I'm a singer who touches millions of people and my words and my knowledge of what I'm learning from cancer can help millions. And if I can help millions, even if I help one person, that's one person more than none.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Pop Star Anastacia Battles Cancer http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123686&page=2, ABC News.com, May 2, 2004.
General Quotes

Noam Chomsky photo

“We take for granted that the organism does not learn to grow arms or to reach puberty… When we turn to the mind and its products, the situation is not qualitatively different from what we find in the case of the body.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Source: Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s, Rules and Representations (1980), p. 2-3 as cited in: Jerry Fodor (1983) Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. p. 4.

Jean Paul photo
Robert F. Kennedy photo

“Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Speech at the University of Kansas at Lawrence http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Remarks-of-Robert-F-Kennedy-at-the-University-of-Kansas-March-18-1968.aspx (18 March 1968)

Carl Hayden photo

“This man knows the legislative process as few others have learned them. He knows that legislation is compromise, he knows that there must be give and take, and he knows how legislative work is accomplished.”

Carl Hayden (1877–1972) American federal politician

Morris Udall
Johnson, James W. (2002). Arizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious, illustrations by David `Fitz' Fitzsimmons, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. pp 155. ISBN 0-8165-2203-0.
About

Henry Hazlitt photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo

“Had Japan been a tenth as wise as Abraham Lincoln, had Hitler been a hundredth part as sensible, we today, the United States and England, would not have a chance in this war. Had those two enemies of ours coveted the lands upon subject peoples dwell today and had they whispered the magic word freedom to those peoples, they might have set half the world against us in a moment. But they have lost because they attacked lands already free, and because they have enslaved peoples accustomed to freedom. By this one thing alone, if by no other, they are doomed. They have misread the hearts and minds of men. By their enslavement of the peoples whom they have made subject by force of arms, they have aroused against themselves a greater force than can be found in any army, in any weapon. It is this- the will of men everywhere to be free. Let us learn today from Abraham Lincoln, as we fight this war still so far from victory. He could not win that war until he lit the fire in the hearts of men and women enslaved. Nothing had been enough to make men rise up and shout aloud for victory until that moment. A few men like war and enjoy it as a game. But most men and all women hate war. They will not fight with their whole hearts unless they are set aflame. And the torch is always the same words. Whisper those words and men and women will shout them aloud and sing them as they march. The words are simple but they are the most potent in the universe- they are the spiritual dynamite of victory. The words? "All persons held as slaves… are and henceforward shall be free."”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: What America Means to Me (1943), p. 195

Judith Sheindlin photo

“to a defendant who called the plaintiff a "witch" after the judge ruled in the plaintiff's favor: You gotta learn to behave yourself, madam. I have a feeling you have a pretty hot temper - not as hot as mine. That's all - out!”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn9XiHQBe1k
Quotes from Judge Judy cases, Dress, stand, speak properly

Nicholas Murray Butler photo

“Man's conception of what is most worth knowing and reflecting upon, of what may best compel his scholarly energies, has changed greatly with the years. His earliest impressions were of his own insignificance and of the stupendous powers and forces by which he was surrounded and ruled. The heavenly fires, the storm-cloud and the thunderbolt, the rush of waters and the change of seasons, all filled him with an awe which straightway saw in them manifestations of the superhuman and the divine. Man was absorbed in nature, a mythical and legendary nature to be sure, but still the nature out of which science was one day to arise. Then, at the call of Socrates, he turned his back on nature and sought to know himself; to learn the secrets of those mysterious and hidden processes by which he felt and thought and acted. The intellectual centre of gravity had passed from nature to man. From that day to this the goal of scholarship has been the understanding of both nature and man, the uniting of them in one scheme or plan of knowledge, and the explaining of them as the offspring of the omnipotent activity of a Creative Spirit, the Christian God. Slow and painful have been the steps toward the goal which to St. Augustine seemed so near at hand, but which has receded through the intervening centuries as the problems grew more complex and as the processes of inquiry became so refined that whole worlds of new and unsuspected facts revealed themselves. Scholars divided into two camps. The one would have ultimate and complete explanations at any cost; the other, overcome by the greatness of the undertaking, held that no explanation in a large or general way was possible. The one camp bred sciolism; the other narrow and helpless specialization.
At this point the modern university problem took its rise; and for over four hundred years the university has been striving to adjust its organization so that it may most effectively bend its energies to the solution of the problem as it is. For this purpose the university's scholars have unconsciously divided themselves into three types or classes: those who investigate and break new ground; those who explain, apply, and make understandable the fruits of new investigation; and those philosophically minded teachers who relate the new to the old, and, without dogma or intolerance, point to the lessons taught by the developing human spirit from its first blind gropings toward the light on the uplands of Asia or by the shores of the Mediterranean, through the insights of the world's great poets, artists, scientists, philosophers, statesmen, and priests, to its highly organized institutional and intellectual life of to-day. The purpose of scholarly activity requires for its accomplishment men of each of these three types. They are allies, not enemies; and happy the age, the people, or the university in which all three are well represented. It is for this reason that the university which does not strive to widen the boundaries of human knowledge, to tell the story of the new in terms that those familiar with the old can understand, and to put before its students a philosophical interpretation of historic civilization, is, I think, falling short of the demands which both society and university ideals themselves may fairly make.
A group of distinguished scholars in separate and narrow fields can no more constitute a university than a bundle of admirably developed nerves, without a brain and spinal cord, can produce all the activities of the human organism.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Scholarship and service : the policies of a national university in a modern democracy https://archive.org/details/scholarshipservi00butluoft (1921)

Bertolt Brecht photo
Joseph Beuys photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
Charles A. Beard photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Vyjayanthimala photo

“But first I was made to learn music, because music and dance go together. You can sing, but you can’t dance without music…”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

In "There's no slowing down for Vyjayanthimala."

Mao Zedong photo