Quotes about learning
page 6

“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

“Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.”

Saul Bellow book Ravelstein

Source: Ravelstein

Happiness, People, Books, Reading

“If you want to change a whole people, then you start with the girls. It stands to reason: they learn faster, and they pass on what they learn to their children.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

Children, People, Girl, Change

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby (1925), ch. 9

Friendship, Dead, Cute

“My mind is the only sanctuary that has not been stolen from me. Men have tried to breach it before, but I've learned to defend it vigorously, for I am only safe with my innermost thoughts.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Men

“A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“It is better to know how to learn than to know.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“When reading a book, be very certain that you never go past a word you do not fully understand. The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has gone past a word that was not understood.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Books, Understanding, Study, Reading

“Ladies and gentlemen: War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Post-Presidency, Nobel lecture (2002)
Source: The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture

War, Children, Peace, Evil

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison

People, Light, Suffering

“If you learn music you'll learn most all there is to know.”

Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) Purported clairvoyant healer and psychic

Music

“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book II, 1103a.33: Cited in: Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:9
Nicomachean Ethics
Source: The Nicomachean Ethics

“One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.”

Mark Twain book The Innocents Abroad

Source: The Innocents Abroad

Travel

“She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

People, Time

“She seemed to soften at that, but then she asked, "Has anything really changed?"
"I've learned I need to consult you in matters, lest you decapitate me.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

Change

“Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

China, Past and Present (1972) Ch. 6

“She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood: that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements.”

Alice Munro book Too Much Happiness

Source: "Too Much Happiness", in Too Much Happiness (2009)

Life, People, Appearance, Childhood

“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, "So what." That's one of my favorite things to say. "So what." "My mother didn't love me." So what. "My husband won't ball me." So what. "I'm a success but I'm still alone." So what. I don't know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.”

Andy Warhol book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 7: Time
Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Love, People, Problem, Time

“It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

People

“It is one of those lessons that every child should learn: Don't play with fire, sharp objects, or ancient artifacts.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

“You live and learn. Or you don't live long.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Source: Time Enough for Love (1973)

“Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Time

“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Source: Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass

Imagination, Time

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life

“I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People

“Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

“After all that I'd been through, after all that I'd learned and all that I'd been given, I was going to do what I had been doing every day for the last few years now: just show up and do the best that I could do with whatever lay in front of me.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

Source: Lucky Man

“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Speech at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895

Life

“It doesn't matter if you can't say it right now. I'll say it for both of us. And someday you'll learn.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Awakening

“The whole point of life is learning to live with the consequences of the bad decision we've made.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

Life, Decision

“Philosophy is written in this grand book, which stands continually open before our eyes (I say the 'Universe'), but can not be understood without first learning to comprehend the language and know the characters as it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is impossible to humanly understand a word; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth.”

Galileo Galilei book The Assayer

From Italian: La filosofia è scritta in questo grandissimo libro, che continuamente ci sta aperto innanzi agli occhi (io dico l'Universo), ma non si può intendere, se prima non il sapere a intender la lingua, e conoscer i caratteri ne quali è scritto. Egli è scritto in lingua matematica, e i caratteri son triangoli, cerchi ed altre figure geometriche, senza i quali mezzi è impossibile intenderne umanamente parola; senza questi è un aggirarsi vanamente per un oscuro labirinto.
Other translations:
Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.
The Assayer (1623), as translated by Thomas Salusbury (1661), p. 178, as quoted in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (2003) by Edwin Arthur Burtt, p. 75.
Philosophy is written in this grand book — I mean the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.
As translated in The Philosophy of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1966) by Richard Henry Popkin, p. 65
Il Saggiatore (1623)
Source: Galilei, Galileo. Il Saggiatore: Nel Quale Con Bilancia Efquifita E Giufta Si Ponderano Le Cofe Contenute Nellalibra Astronomica E Filosofica Di Lotario Sarsi Sigensano, Scritto in Forma Di Lettera All'Illustr. Et Rever. Mons. D. Virginio Cesarini. In Roma: G. Mascardi, 1623. Google Play. Google. Web. 22 Dec. 2015. <https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=-U0ZAAAAYAAJ>.

Books, Mathematics, Understanding, Universe

“No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.”

Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) Journalist and writer

Source: If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

Feeling, Imagination, Intelligence, Time

“When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Love, Life, God, Heart

“I found my God in music and the arts, with writers like Hermann Hesse, and musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter. In some way, in some form, my God was always there, but now I have learned to talk to him.”

Eric Clapton (1945) English musician, singer, songwriter, and guitarist

God, Art, Music, Way

“I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.”

Lou Holtz (1937) American college football coach, professional football coach, television sports announcer

Question

“They're so cold, these scholars!
May lightning strike their food
so that their mouths learn how
to eat fire!”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Food

“The key to raising achievement is to recognize that teaching and learning is a relationship.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: Creative Schools: Revolutionizing Education from the Ground Up

“Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Pain, Business, Tree

“You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

“It seemed weird calling a teenager 'sir' but I'd learned to be careful with immortals. They tended to get offended easily. Then, they blew stuff up.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn’t want to be without each other.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

“These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Humanity
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: Much advance publicity was made for the address the Master would deliver on The Destruction of the World and a large crowd gathered at the monastery grounds to hear him.
The address was over in less than a minute. All he said was:
"These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness."

Religion, Silence, Wealth

“It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God: but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

God, People

“In such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant
More learned than the ears.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Business

“Freedom in education has many aspects. There is first of all freedom to learn or not to learn. Then there is freedom as to what to learn. And in later education there is freedom of opinion.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Sceptical Essays

Education, Freedom

“You learn eventually that, while there are no villains, there are no heroes either. And until you make the final discovery that there are only human beings, who are therefore all the more fascinating, you are liable to miss something.”

Paul Gallico (1897–1976) American writer and journalist

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Playboy interview, May 1971
Context: There's a lot of things great about life. But I think tomorrow is the most important thing. Comes in to us at midnight very clean, ya know. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

Life, Hope, Perfection

“It is quite possible--overwhelmingly probable, one might guess--that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Life, Personality

“Always expecting this and expecting that. May I recommend serenity to you? A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment. Learn to be one with the joy of the moment.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 4

Life, Disappointment, Joy

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s Source: "A Letter: Being an Answer to a Friend, on the publication of The Age of Reason" (12 May 1797), published in an 1852 edition of The Age of Reason, p. 205 http://books.google.com/books?id=2PgRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA205

God

“We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Children, Peace, Peaceful

“But probably that's the way of the world - when we have finally learned something we're too old to apply it - and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Source: The Black Obelisk

World, Way

“Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Art, Sense, Study, Science

“Could you love a woman you didn't respect? Could you worship someone without believeing in her? Could you be madly in love with a woman you didn't admire? Well, you could. Not only that, it might be better that way. Easier. It took Paul almost forty years to learn that carnal platitude. Nevertheless, he always took Sonia to dinners where, sooner or later, her stupidity would explode, with the result that brighter souls would inevitably pick up on it right away and cast a sympathetic, albeit ironical, look in his direction, which only excited him all the more.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

Love, Stupidity, Way, Soul

“The mathematical thermology created by Fourier may tempt us to hope that, as he has estimated the temperature of the space in which we move, me may in time ascertain the mean temperature of the heavenly bodies: but I regard this order of facts as for ever excluded from our recognition. We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere. We may therefore define Astronomy as the science by which we discover the laws of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena presented by the heavenly bodies.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Book II: Astronomy, Ch. I: General View
The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1853)

Law, Hope, Mathematics, Science

“If thou desire to profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faithfulness; nor even desire the repute of learning.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 37.

Faith, Reading

“Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

People, Smile, Game, Tear

“We later learned that all the nineteen passengers in the non-smoking compartment had been killed. When the plane had hit the water a hole had been made in the plane and the water had rushed in. I had told a friend at Oslo who was finding me a place that he must find me a place where I could smoke, remarking jocularly, 'If I cannot smoke, I shall die.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Unexpectedly, this turned out to be true.
1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)

Water

“A social world [is] a comprehensive and given reality confronting the individual in a manner analogous to the reality of the natural world… In early phases of socialization the child is quite incapable of distinguishing between the objectivity of natural phenomena and the objectivity of the social formations… The objective reality of institutions is not diminished if the individual does not understand their purpose or their mode of operation…He must ‘go out’ and learn about them, just as he must learn about nature.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 59-61

World, Understanding, Nature, Reality

“It is not a reproach but a compliment to learning, to say, that great scholars are less fit for business; since the truth is, business is so much a lower thing than learning, that a man used to the last cannot easily bring his stomach down to the first.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

Truth, Business

“You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

"The Embattled Woman Who Relishes Crosswords, Children...and Running India," People (June 30, 1975).

“Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have come to include all kinds — some Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have friends who are called capitalists, Socialists, and Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives, extremists — some are even Uncle Toms! My friends today are black, brown, red, yellow, and white!”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), p. 375

Truth

“What we learn in kindergarten comes up again and again in our lives as long as we live. In far more complex, polysyllabic forms, to be sure. In lectures, encyclopedias, bibles, company rules, courts of law, sermons, and handbooks. Life will examine us continually to see if we have understood and have practiced what we were taught that first year of school.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

Life, School, Law

“In youth we learn; in age we understand.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

In der Jugend lernt, im Alter versteht man. p. 13 http://books.google.com/books?id=DOEPAAAAQAAJ&q=%22In+der+Jugend+lernt+im+Alter+versteht+man%22&pg=PA13#v=onepage Aphorisms (1880/1893)

Youth, Age, Understanding

“I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity, to this announcement. I know that I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington, but I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change. People who love their country can change it.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Announcement of Candidacy for President of the United States. (10 February 2007) http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/10/obama.president/index.html 2007

Love, People, Way, Change

“In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

As quoted in Perfecting Ourselves : Coordinating Body, Mind, and Spirit (2002) by Aaron Hoopes, p. 64
Posthumous publications

World

“I have experienced personally over the past few years how a purity of diet and thought are interrelated. And when Americans become truly concerned with the purity of the food that enters their own personal systems, when they learn to eat properly, we can expect to see profound changes effected in the social and political system of this nation. The two systems are inseparable.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Dick Gregory's Political Primer (Harper & Row, 1972), p. 262.

Food, Change, Past, Personality

“Four things a man must learn to do
If he would make his record true:
To think without confusion clearly;
To love his fellow-men sincerely;
To act from honest motives purely;
To trust in God and Heaven securely.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

"Four Things," Poems, vol. 1 (vol. 9 of The Works of Henry Van Dyke) (1920).

Love, Men, God, Motivation

“You can kill people with compassion. That's the Freudian Oedipal situation. Think about working in a nursing home. There's a rule of thumb that we can use as a guide when interacting with people in general. It is this: Do not do anything for anyone that they can do themselves. You just steal it from them. Imagine that you're working with elderly people. It might be easier to do something for them than to let them struggle through it. You just speed their demise by taking away their last vestiges of independence. People do the same thing with kids. The answer is: struggle through it. When people struggle through things on their own, using their own abilities - they learn how to live. You have to be one heard-hearted sonofabitch to allow this, but it's what's best for people. Think about that. What's the alternative? If we cater to people all the time, then we end up becoming a major cause of them becoming people who are always catered to. This is an incredibly important lesson in the triumph of fostering independence over casual compassion.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

People, Home, Imagination, Thinking

“It occurred to me that if my friends were loathsome, perhaps I needed to learn from my enemies.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

“Wisdom can be learned. But it cannot be taught.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 53

Wisdom

“Most important, you learn never to trust a man, even if he seems honest and sincere. You learn how men deceive themselves and how impossible it is to help them without injuring yourself.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

Men, Help, Sincerity

“I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions… Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

The New York Times (26 November 1978)

Reading

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Cited as a piece of anonymous folk-wisdom from the 1940s onwards https://books.google.com/books?id=iNkWAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Learn+from+the+mistakes+of+others.+You+can%27t+live+long+enough+to+make+them+all+yourself%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22make+them+all+yourself%22. Not attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt until 2001 https://books.google.com/books?id=ctxi36FCi18C&pg=PA151&dq=%22Learn+from+the+mistakes+of+others%22+%22live+long%22+roosevelt&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI_sD5mqDLAhWIKGMKHb8HAZ0Q6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22Learn%20from%20the%20mistakes%20of%20others%22%20%22live%20long%22%20roosevelt&f=false. Disputed

“Dear William Shakespeare. I am a 14 year old and I’m queer like you. I’m learning art. I wanted to be a queer artist like Leonardo or Michaelangelo. But I like Francis Bacon best I read Alan Ginsberg, Rimbaud. I like Tchaikovsky, if I make films I will make them like Eisenstein, Murnau, Pasolini, Visconti. Love from Derek.”

Derek Jarman (1942–1994) British film director and artist

Letter to the Minister, 1992

Love, Art, Reading

“But I fancy that I hear some (for there will never be wanting men who would rather be eloquent than good) saying "Why then is there so much art devoted to eloquence? Why have you given precepts on rhetorical coloring and the defense of difficult causes, and some even on the acknowledgment of guilt, unless, at times, the force and ingenuity of eloquence overpowers even truth itself? For a good man advocates only good causes, and truth itself supports them sufficiently without the aid of learning."”
Videor mihi audire quosdam (neque enim deerunt umquam qui diserti esse quam boni malint) illa dicentis: "Quid ergo tantum est artis in eloquentia? cur tu de coloribus et difficilium causarum defensione, nonnihil etiam de confessione locutus es, nisi aliquando vis ac facultas dicendi expugnat ipsam veritatem? Bonus enim vir non agit nisi bonas causas, eas porro etiam sine doctrina satis per se tuetur veritas ipsa."

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

Book XII, Chapter I, 33; translation by Rev. John Selby Watson
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)

Men, Truth, Art, Color

“Successful men of all the ages have learned to multiply themselves by gathering thought energy into a high potential and using it in the direction of the purpose intended. Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common. The most conspicuous of these is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men’s lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man’s life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws. The geniuses have learned how to gather thought energy together to use for transforming their conceptions into material forms. The thinking of creative and successful men is never exerted in any direction other that that intended. That is why great men produce a prodigious amount of work, seemingly without effort and without fatigue. The amount of work such men leave to posterity is amazing. When one considers such men of our times as Edison, Henry Ford or Theodore Roosevelt, one will find the three characteristics I have mentioned common to every one of them.”

Walter Russell (1871–1963) American philosopher

The Man who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe

Life, Men, Age, Thinking

“Roland La Starza was tough, but Ezzard Charles was the toughest man I ever fought. I learned what pain was all about when I fought him.”

Rocky Marciano (1923–1969) American boxer

Reminiscing about his opponents; quoted in "Sept. 17, 1954: Marciano vs Charles" by Eliott McCormick, in The Fight City (17 September 2019) https://www.thefightcity.com/sept-17-1954-marciano-vs-charles-ii-rocky-marciano-ezzard-charles-heavyweight-championship-joe-louis-jersey-joe-walcott/

Pain

“The only hidden meaning of things
Is that they have no hidden meaning.
It's the strangest thing of all,
Stranger than all poets' dreams
And all philosophers' thoughts,
That things are really what they seem to be
And there's nothing to understand.
Yes, this is what my senses learned on their own:
Things have no meaning: they have existence.
Things are the only hidden meaning of things.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

O único sentido oculto das coisas
É elas não terem sentido oculto nenhum,
É mais estranho do que todas as estranhezas
E do que os sonhos de todos os poetas
E os pensamentos de todos os filósofos,
Que as coisas sejam realmente o que parecem ser
E não haja nada que compreender.
Sim, eis o que os meus sentidos aprenderam sozinhos:—
As coisas não têm significação: têm existência.
As coisas são o único sentido oculto das coisas.
Alberto Caeiro (heteronym), O Guardador de Rebanhos ("The Keeper of Sheep"), XXXIX, trans. Richard Zenith.

Dreams, Understanding, Sense

“1953. Learn the art of Silence; the wise Man that holds his Tongue, says more than the Fool who speaks.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Fools, Art, Silence

“Soldiers — You are about to return to your homes and your friends, after having, as I learn, performed in camp a comparatively short term of duty in this great contest. I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speeches to Ohio Regiments (1864), Speech to the One Hundred Sixty-fourth Ohio Regiment

Home, Country

“The great historian John Hope Franklin, who helped to get this museum started, once said, “Good history is a good foundation for a better present and future.” He understood the best history doesn’t just sit behind a glass case; it helps us to understand what’s outside the case. The best history helps us recognize the mistakes that we’ve made and the dark corners of the human spirit that we need to guard against. And, yes, a clear-eyed view of history can make us uncomfortable, and shake us out of familiar narratives. But it is precisely because of that discomfort that we learn and grow and harness our collective power to make this nation more perfect.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by the President at the Dedication of the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/24/remarks-president-dedication-national-museum-african-american-history (24 September 2016) 2016

Hope, History, Understanding, Future

“I was born undisciplined. Never, even as a child, could I be made to obey a set rule. What little I know I learned at home. School was always like a prison to me, I could never bring myself to stay there, even four hours a day, when the sun was shining and the sea was so tempting, and it was such fun scrambling over cliffs and paddling in the shallows. Such, to the great despair of my parents, was the unruly but healthy life I lived until I was fourteen or fifteen. In the meantime I somehow picked up the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic, with a smattering of spelling. And there my schooling ended. It never worried me very much because I always had plenty of amusements on the side. I doodled in the margins of my books, I decorated our blue copy paper with ultra-fantastic drawings, and I drew the faces and profiles of my schoolmasters as outrageously as I could, distorting them out of all recognition.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 21 : About his youth
after Monet's death

Life, Books, School, Home

“206. If someone asked us 'but is that true?' we might say "yes" to him; and if he demanded grounds we might say "I can't give you any grounds, but if you learn more you too will think the same."”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)

Thinking

“I was unable to devote myself to the learning of this algebra and the continued concentration upon it, because of obstacles in the vagaries of time which hindered me; for we have been deprived of all the people of knowledge save for a group, small in number, with many troubles, whose concern in life is to snatch the opportunity, when time is asleep, to devote themselves meanwhile to the investigation and perfection of a science; for the majority of people who imitate philosophers confuse the true with the false, and they do nothing but deceive and pretend knowledge, and they do not use what they know of the sciences except for base and material purposes; and if they see a certain person seeking for the right and preferring the truth, doing his best to refute the false and untrue and leaving aside hypocrisy and deceit, they make a fool of him and mock him.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra (1070).

Life, People, Truth, Fools

“The impetuous conquests of Alexander, the more politic and premeditated extension of territory made by the Romans, the wild and cruel incursions of the Mexicans, and the despotic acquisitions of the incas, have in both hemispheres contributed to put an end to the separate existence of many tribes as independent nations, and tended at the same time to establish more extended international amalgamation. Men of great and strong minds, as well as whole nations, acted under the influence of one idea, the purity of which was, however, utterly unknown to them. It was Christianity which first promulgated the truth of its exalted charity, although the seed sown yielded but a slow and scanty harvest. Before the religion of Christ manifested its form, its existence was only revealed by a faint foreshadowing presentiment. In recent times, the idea of civilization has acquired additional intensity, and has given rise to a desire of extending more widely the relations of national intercourse and of intellectual cultivation; even selfishness begins to learn that by such a course its interests will be better served than by violent and forced isolation. Language more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties it certainly seems to separate nations, but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together on the other hand without injuring individual national characteristics.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Kosmos (1847)

Men, Truth, Religion, Idea

“A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.”

Mark Twain book A Tramp Abroad

A Tramp Abroad (1880)

Personality

“It is as though a star throws the whole secret history of its being into its spectrum, and we have only to learn how to read it aright in order to solve the most abstruse problems of the physical Universe.”

Herbert Dingle (1890–1978) British astronomer

Introduction, page xxv
Modern Astrophysics, London, 1924

Secret, History, Star, Problem

“The position I early was enabled to take was one of self-reliance. And were all women as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same. But they are so overloaded with precepts and guardians who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of thought or character, that their minds are impeded with doubts till they lose their chance of fair, free proportions. The difficulty is to get them to the point from which they shall naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help.”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Women, Nature, Thinking, Chance

“I do remember not having good social skills [as a child], although I learned them later. I learned them from hanging out at a gay disco, learning them from drag queens; and I learned them in Liverpool, and I learned them in juvenile hall. So, I learned [my social skills] from future criminals, drag queens, and rock stars.”

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

On developing social skills , The Return of Courtney Love (2006)
2006–2013

Star, Future

“18. The deeply learned ones know the mind as the directly expressed meaning of the supreme knowledge. The heart is the meaning aimed at. The Supreme is none other than the heart.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

The Science of the Heart

Knowledge, Heart

“In the 1970s I was amazed to be talked about as a ’60s sex symbol. I wasn’t that person, as if I were a doll from the past. I had to learn to come to terms with that. It’s funny, it’s silly, the ridiculousness of having asked so much of celebrity. Then it becomes really interesting and very much part of the excitement of the life you’re living now, knowing you’re approaching the end of it.”

Julie Christie (1940) British actress and activist

As quoted in "A Role About Winter for Julie Christie, a Star in Eternal Spring]" by Alan Riding in The New York Times (18 April 2007)

Life, Sex, Past, Parting

“In a certain sense all knowledge is inductive. We can only learn the laws and relations of things in nature by observing those things. But the knowledge gained from the senses is knowledge only of particular facts, and we require some process of reasoning by which we may collect out of the facts the laws obeyed by them. Experience gives us the materials of knowledge: induction digests those materials, and yields us general knowledge. When we possess such knowledge, in the form of general propositions and natural laws, we can usefully apply the reverse process of deduction to ascertain the exact information required at any moment. In its ultimate foundation, then, all knowledge is inductive—in the sense that it is derived by a certain inductive reasoning from the facts of experience.”

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) English economist and logician

Source: The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method (1874) Vol. 1, p. 14

Law, Nature, Knowledge, Sense

“All I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes and insects. In consequence when I am eighty, I shall have made still more progress. At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at one hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive. I beg those who live as long as I to see if I do not keep my word. Written at the age of seventy five by me, once Hokusai, today Gwakyo Rojin, the old man mad about drawing.”

Hokusai (1760–1849) Japanese artist

On one of his pseudonom, Gyakyo Rojin. He may have said the above in his late life definitely, since he began to use the name Gwakyo Rojin in 1843.
Attributed

Age, Nature, Bird, Fish

“I think that I've learned some lessons over the past four years, and the most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That's how I got elected and that's how the big accomplishments like health care got done – was because we mobilized the American people to speak out. That's how we were able to cut taxes for middle class families. So, something that I'd really like to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more constant conversation with the American people, so that they can put pressure on Congress to move some of these issues forward.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Univision forum, , quoted in [2012-09-20, Obama: ‘You Can’t Change Washington From The Inside’, Noah, Rothman, Mediaite.com, http://www.mediaite.com/tv/obama-you-cant-change-washington-from-the-inside/, 2012-09-21]
2012

People, Health, Family, Thinking

“Anxiety was a philosophical concept before it taken up by psychology and psychiatry. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard (1813-1855) argued that anxiety is part of human nature. Anxiety arises where possibility and actuality come into contact and the present touches the future. Anxiety is a product of having the freedom to make choices and act, and by doing so make a commitment to one’s identity, ways of being in the world, and standing in relation to other people. For Kierkegaard, anxiety can be an avenue to stand in relation to God. This is why he wrote, “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”
One can bracket out the God dimensions and still learn something valuable from Kierkegaard, namely that anxiety can cause inaction, which is, in its most basic sense, a loss of freedom. What is possible may never actualize and one may lose the present by tending to an imagined future. One becomes immobilized and unable to meet needs and realize goals and aspirations.”

Peg O'Connor (1965) American philosopher

"Anxiety Is a Part of Human Nature" https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/philosophy-stirred-not-shaken/201703/anxiety-is-part-human-nature, Psychology Today, (Mar 24, 2017).

God, People, World, Way

“Mr. President, I am not undertaking to answer the charge that I am ignorant. It is true. I am an ignorant man. I have had no college education. I have not even had a high school education. But the things that takes me far in politics is that I do not have to color what comes into my mind and into my heart. I say it unvarnished. I say it without veneer. I have not the learning to do otherwise, and therefore my ignorance is often not detected.

I know the hearts of the People because I have not colored my own. I know when I am right in my own conscience. I do not talk one way in the cloakroom and another way out here. I do not talk one way back there in the hills of Louisiana and another way here in the Senate.

I have one language. Ignorant as it is, it is the universal language within the sphere in which I operate. Its simplicity gains pardon for my lack of letters and education.

Nonetheless my voice will be the same as it has been. Patronage will not change it. Fear will not change it. Persecution will not change it. It cannot be changed while people suffer. The only way it can be changed is to make the lives of these people decent and respectable. No one will ever hear political opposition out of me when that is done.”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Huey Long, U.S. Senate floor speech, March 5, 1935

People, Education, Fear, School

“It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Il faut vingt ans pour mener l’homme de l’état de plante où il est dans le ventre de sa mère, et de l’état de pur animal, qui est le partage de sa première enfance, jusqu’à celui où la maturité de la raison commence à poindre. Il a fallu trente siècles pour connaître un peu sa structure. Il faudrait l’éternité pour connaître quelque chose de son âme. Il ne faut qu’un instant pour le tuer.
"Man: General Reflection on Man" (1771)
Citas, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)

Soul, Appearance, Animals, Childhood

“Ethics could teach us only those purposes and ideals. If the teachers seeks insight into the means by which the aim can be reached, into the facts by which the child can be molded, his way must lead from ethics to psychology. (…) Water flows downhill, anyhow, but to bring the water uphill hydraulic forces are indeed necessary. To overcome nature and instead to prepare for a life of ideals, to inhibit personal desires and instead to learn to serve the higher purposes indeed demands most serious and most systematic efforts. It is the teachers' task to make these efforts with all his best knowledge of mind and body, of social and of cultural values.”

Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) German-American psychologist, philosopher and agitator

Hugo Munsterberg, Psychology and the Teacher, 1909 (new edition, 2006), pp. 64-65.

Life, Way, Nature, Knowledge

Quotes about learning page 6

Quotes about learning
page 6