Quotes about learning
page 8

Isaac Bashevis Singer photo
Thomas J. Sargent photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Richard David Precht photo

“Learning and enjoyment are the secret to a fulfilled life. Learning without enjoyment wears you down, enjoyment without learning dulls you.”

Richard David Precht (1964) German philosopher and author

Quote translated from his German book: Wer bin ich – und wenn ja, wie viele? Eine philosophische Reise, Goldmann, München 2007, ISBN 3-442-31143-8

Stefan Zweig photo
Socrates photo
Pliny the Elder photo
Theodor W. Adorno photo
Bruce Lee photo

“Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 5

Malcolm X photo
Huey Long photo

“They kept on hollering, and I simply had to put my foot down. I said, 'I'm the governor and I say the ignorant in this state have to learn, blacks as well as whites.”

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

And they learned.
Huey Long on conservative resistance to illiteracy programs for Negroes (Williams p. 706)

Antisthenes photo

“Being asked what learning is the most necessary, he replied, "How to get rid of having anything to unlearn."”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 7
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Socrates photo
Charlemagne photo
Vladimir Putin photo
Thomas Mann photo
Elon Musk photo

“Well, I have tried to learn as much as possible from prior attempts.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Li Yundi photo

“I’m very happy that so many children are learning the piano because of me.”

Li Yundi (1982) Chinese pianist

telegraph.co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/10863146/Lang-Lang-Weve-never-met.html

Robert Browning photo

“What's come to perfection perishes.
Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven;
Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Old Pictures in Florence, xvii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“No science of any kind can be divorced from ethical considerations… Science is a human learning process which arises in certain subcultures in human society and not in others, and a subculture as we seen is a group of people defined by acceptance of certain common values, that is, an ethic which permits extensive communication between them.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, Economics As A Moral Science, 1969, p. 2 cited in: John B. Davis (2011) Kenneth Boulding as a Moral Scientist http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=econ_workingpapers Working paper

Lady Gaga photo

“I've learned love is like a brick, you can build a house or sink a dead body.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Lyrics, Judas.

George Washington photo

“What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

A modern fabrication, possibly derived from David Barton's claim (Original Intent, p. 85) that "By George Washington’s own words, what youths learned in America’s schools 'above all' was 'the religion of Jesus Christ.'”. Washington did use the phrase "above all the religion of Jesus Christ" on 12 May 1779 in a reply to a petition from a Lenape delegation asking for assistance in promoting the missionary activities of David Zeisberger among their people: "You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention..." He did not say anything about "What students would learn in American schools," though earlier in the same reply he did say "I am glad you have brought three of the Children of your principal Chiefs to be educated with us." While there's nothing in the reply about how those "Children" might be educated (in fact Congress put two of them through Princeton) it's possible that suggested the fabricated portion. See Louise Phelps Kellogg, Frontier Advance on the Upper Ohio 1778-1779 (Madison WI, 1916), pp. 317-324, for the episode. Washington's reply is also found in John C. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799, vol. 15 (Washington D.C., 1936), p. 55
Misattributed, Spurious attributions

Barack Obama photo

“That's silly talk… Talk to my wife. She'll tell me I need to learn to just put my socks on the hamper.”

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

"Barack the Blessed" by Jim Geraghty in National Review (27 July 2004) http://www.nationalreview.com/geraghty/geraghty200407270212.asp quoting Obama on his Presidential aspirations as stated on Meet the Press the previous Sunday.
2004

Jane Goodall photo
Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo
Jack Welch photo

“At the heart of this culture is an understanding that an organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive business advantage.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Cited in: Robert Slater (1998), Jack Welch & The G.E. Way: Management Insights and Leadership. p. 12

Bruce Lee photo

“Even today, I dare not say that I have reached a state of achievement. I'm still learning, for learning is boundless.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

Bertrand Russell photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“Well, I learned a lot. … You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Quoted by Lou Cannon in his article Latin [American] Trip an Eye-Opener for Reagan in The Washington Post (6 December 1982)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Matsushita Konosuke photo

“The untrapped mind is open enough to see many possibilities, humble enough to learn from anyone and anything, forbearing enough to forgive all, perceptive enough to see things as they really are, and reasonable enough to judge their true value.”

Matsushita Konosuke (1894–1989) Japanese businessman

Kōnosuke Matsushita (1989) Nurturing Dreams My Path in Life. Quoted in: Tony Kippenberger (2002), Leadership Styles: Leading 08.04. p. 73

Barack Obama photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo
Vātsyāyana photo
Moira Lister photo

“I do feel one learns more from one's failures than from one's successes”

Moira Lister (1923–2007) actress

Sunday Times interview (1983)

Rich Mullins photo
Jerry Lewis photo

“I learned from my dad that when you walk in front of an audience, they are the kings and queens, and you’re but the jester — and if you don’t think that way, you’re going to get very, very conceited.”

Jerry Lewis (1926–2017) American comedian, actor, film producer, writer and film director

As quoted in "Jerry Lewis on Dean Martin: 'I think of him every day.'" by Alex Scordelis, in The New York Post (26 August 2016) http://nypost.com/2016/08/26/jerry-lewis-on-dean-martin-de-niro-and-his-favorite-joke/

Ronald Reagan photo
Henry Miller photo
David Copperfield photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“If graduates do not get relevant experience in their field of study after graduation, they will forget what they learned and, in a few years, their knowledge may be completely lost”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Quoted in Hong Kong's Career Times newspaper (February 6th 2004) http://www.ctgoodjobs.hk/english/article/show_article.asp?category_id=1070&article_id=12825&title=is-hong-kong-investing-enough-in-its-future&listby=date&listby_id=&page=4
Miscellaneous Quotes in the Press (2002-Present)

José Saramago photo
Galileo Galilei photo
Douglass C. North photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“You can only learn so much by reading. You cannot learn to ride a bicycle by reading a book.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Lewis Carroll photo
Quintilian photo

“It is a complaint without foundation that "to very few people is granted the faculty of comprehending what is imparted to them, and that most, through dullness of understanding, lose their labor and their time." On the contrary, you will find the greater number of men both ready in conceiving and quick in learning, since such quickness is natural to man. As birds are born to fly, horses to run, and wild beasts to show fierceness, so to us peculiarly belong activity and sagacity of understanding.”
Falsa enim est querela, paucissimis hominibus vim percipiendi quae tradantur esse concessam, plerosque vero laborem ac tempora tarditate ingenii perdere. Nam contra plures reperias et faciles in excogitando et ad discendum promptos. Quippe id est homini naturale, ac sicut aves ad volatum, equi ad cursum, ad saevitiam ferae gignuntur, ita nobis propria est mentis agitatio atque sollertia.

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

Book I, Chapter I, 1; translation by Rev. John Selby Watson
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)

François-René de Chateaubriand photo

“One does not learn how to die by killing others.”

Book IX: Ch. 4: Danton – Camille Desmoulins – Fabre d’Églantine.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)

Mark Twain photo
Jules Verne photo

“"Men, Pencroft, however learned they may be, can never change anything of the cosmographical order established by God Himself.""And yet," added Pencroft, "the world is very learned. What a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!""And what a much bigger book still with all that is not known!" answered Harding.”

<p>Les hommes, Pencroff, si savants qu’ils puissent être, ne pourront jamais changer quoi que ce soit à l’ordre cosmographique établi par Dieu même.</p></p><p>— Et pourtant, ajouta Pencroff, qui montra une certaine difficulté à se résigner, le monde est bien savant! Quel gros livre, monsieur Cyrus, on ferait avec tout ce qu’on sait!</p><p>
Et quel plus gros livre encore avec tout ce qu’on ne sait pas, répondit Cyrus Smith.</p>
Part III, ch. XIV
The Mysterious Island (1874)

Pancho Villa photo
Bruce Lee photo

“In Jeet Kune Do, it’s not how much you have learned, but how much you have absorbed from what you have learned. It is not how much fixed knowledge you can accumulate, but what you can apply livingly that counts. ‘Being’ is more valued than "doing."”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 117

Karl Marx photo

“I pre-suppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Author's prefaces to the First Edition.
(Buch I) (1867)

W.B. Yeats photo

“O but we dreamed to mend
Whatever mischief seemed
To afflict mankind, but now
That winds of winter blow
Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.”

III, st. 3
The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

Richard Dedekind photo
Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo

“When Firuz Tughluq invaded Orissa in 1359 and learned that the region's most important temple was that of Jagannath located inside the raja's fortress in Puri, he carried off the stone image of the god and installed it in Delhi 'in an ignominious position.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Richard Eaton: "Temple desecration and Indo-Muslim states, Essays on Islam and Indian History." And: "Temple desecration in pre-modern India"

Jordan Peterson photo

“Out of the unconscious you get ritual, dreams, drama, story, art, music, and that sort of buffers us. We have our little domain of competence, and we're buffered by the domain of fantasy and culture. That's really what you learn about when you come to university if you're lucky and the professors are smart enough to actually teach you something about culture instead of constantly telling you that it's completely reprehensible and that it should be destroyed. Why you would prefer chaos to order is beyond me. The only possible reason is that you haven't read enough history to understand exactly what chaos means. And believe me, if you knew what chaos means, you'd be pretty goddamn careful about tearing down the temple that you live in, unless you want to be a denizen of chaos. And some people do. That's when the impulses you harbor can really come out and shine. And so a little gratitude is in order, and that makes you appreciative of the wise king while being smart enough to know that he's also an evil tyrant. That's a total conception of the world. It's balanced. Yah, we should preserve nature, but it IS trying to kill us. YES our culture is tyrannical and oppresses people, but it IS protecting us from dying. And YES we're reasonably good people, but don't take that theory too far until you've tested yourself. That's wisdom, at least in part, and that's what these stories try to teach you.”

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

Other

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Claude Monet photo

“One day Eugène Boudin said to me, '.. appreciate the sea, the light, the blue sky'. I took his advice and together we went on long outings during which I painted constantly from nature. This was how I came to understand nature and learned to love it passionately.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

as quoted in Discovering Art, – The life time and work of the World’s greatest Artists, MONET; K.E. Sullivan, Brockhamptonpress, London 2004, p. 10
after Monet's death

Huey Long photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1873/mar/11/second-reading-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (11 March 1873).

Malcolm X photo
Parmenides photo

“You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty.”

Parmenides (-501–-470 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Frag B 1.28-30, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3; Simplicius, Commentary on the Heavens, 557-8; Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus I, 345

Françoise Sagan photo
John Napier photo
Horace photo

“What is to prevent one from telling truth as he laughs, even as teachers sometimes give cookies to children to coax them into learning their A B C?”
Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat? ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima.

Book I, satire i, line 24
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)

Nicholas Negroponte photo

“When you write a computer program you've got to not just list things out and sort of take an algorithm and translate it into a set of instructions. But when there's a bug — and all programs have bugs — you've got to debug it. You've got to go in, change it, and then re-execute … and you iterate. And that iteration is really a very, very good approximation of learning.”

Nicholas Negroponte (1943) American computer scientist

Nicholas Negroponte: A 30-year history of the future http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_a_30_year_history_of_the_future, July 2014, TED Talks (about 13:40 into 19:43 video).
A 30-year history of the future, TED Talk (2014)

Jean Jacques Rousseau photo

“As a man's conduct is controlled by public fact, so is her religion ruled by authority. The daughter should follow her mother's religion, the wife her husband's. Were that religion false, the docility which leads mother and daughter to submit to nature's laws would blot out the sin of error in the sight of Goddess. Unable to judge for themselves they should accept the judgment of father and husband as that of the church. While men unaided cannot deduce the rules of their faith, neither can they assign limits to that faith by the evidence of reason; they allow themselves to be driven hither and thither by all sorts of external influences, they are ever above or below the truth. Extreme in everything, they are either altogether reckless or altogether pious; you never find them able to combine virtue and piety. Their natural exaggeration is not wholly to blame; the ill-regulated control exercised over them by men is partly responsible. Loose morals bring religion into contempt; the terrors of remorse make it a tyrant; this is why women have always too much or too little religion. As a woman's religion is controlled by authority it is more important to show her plainly what to believe than to explain the reasons for belief; for faith attached to ideas half-understood is the main source of fanaticism, and faith demanded on behalf of what is absurd leads to madness or unbelief. Whether our catechisms tend to produce impiety rather than fanaticism I cannot say, but I do know that they lead to one or other. In the first place, when you teach religion to little girls never make it gloomy or tiresome, never make it a task or a duty, and therefore never give them anything to learn by heart, not even their prayers. Be content to say your own prayers regularly in their presence, but do not compel them to join you. Let their prayers be short, as Christ himself has taught us. Let them always be said with becoming reverence and respect; remember that if we ask the Almighty to give heed to our words, we should at least give heed to what we mean to say.”

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book V

Michel De Montaigne photo
Barack Obama photo

“That’s what we must pray for, each of us: a new heart. Not a heart of stone, but a heart open to the fears and hopes and challenges of our fellow citizens. […] Because with an open heart, we can learn to stand in each other’s shoes and look at the world through each other’s eyes, so that maybe the police officer sees his own son in that teenager with a hoodie who's kind of goofing off but not dangerous and the teenager -- maybe the teenager will see in the police officer the same words and values and authority of his parents. With an open heart, we can abandon the overheated rhetoric and the oversimplification that reduces whole categories of our fellow Americans not just to opponents, but to enemies. With an open heart, those protesting for change will guard against reckless language going forward, look at the model set by the five officers we mourn today, acknowledge the progress brought about by the sincere efforts of police departments like this one in Dallas, and embark on the hard but necessary work of negotiation, the pursuit of reconciliation. With an open heart, police departments will acknowledge that, just like the rest of us, they are not perfect; that insisting we do better to root out racial bias is not an attack on cops, but an effort to live up to our highest ideals. […] With an open heart, we can worry less about which side has been wronged, and worry more about joining sides to do right. […] We can decide to come together and make our country reflect the good inside us, the hopes and simple dreams we share.”

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

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)

Barack Obama photo

“So, first of all, you’ve got to try to get people involved. And a lot of people are busy in their own lives or they don’t think it’s going to make a difference or they’re scared if they’re speaking out against authority. And many of the problems that we’re facing, like trying to create jobs or better opportunity or dealing with poverty or dealing with the environment, these are problems that have been going on for decades. And so, to think that somehow you’re going to change it in a day or a week, and then if it doesn’t happen you just give up, well, then you definitely won’t succeed. So the most important thing that I learned as a young person trying to bring about change is you have to be persistent, and you have to get more people involved, and you have to form relationships with different groups and different organizations. And you have to listen to people about what they’re feeling and what they’re concerned about, and build trust. And then, you have to try to find a small part of the problem and get success on that first, so that maybe from there you can start something else and make it bigger and make it bigger, until over time you are really making a difference in your community and in that problem. But you can’t be impatient. And the great thing about young people is they’re impatient. The biggest problem with young people is they’re impatient. It’s a strength, because it’s what makes you want to change things. But sometimes, you can be disappointed if change doesn’t happen right away and then you just give up. And you just have to stay with it and learn from your failures, as well as your successes.”

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

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)

Steven Weinberg photo
Kenzaburō Ōe photo
Morris Raphael Cohen photo
Deval Patrick photo

“Among many other things, 9/11 was a failure of human understanding. It was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States. But it was also about the failure of human beings to understand each other and to learn to love each other. It seems to me that lesson at that morning is something that we must carry with us every day.”

Deval Patrick (1956) 71st Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA

Sep. 11 Memorial service speech, Boston (September 11, 2007) http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/09/13/patrick_defends_sept_11_speech/

“We are not here to learn to play, we are here to play to learn.”

Guy Finley (1949) American self-help writer, philosopher, and spiritual teacher, and former professional songwriter and musician

Secrets of Being Unstoppable

Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times — The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.”

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

Preface (December 1960) to The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1961), p. xvi; the last line was originally used in the initial edition of her autobiography: This Is My Story (1937)

Kurt Cobain photo

“I'd like to live off the band, but if not, I'll just retire to Mexico or Yugoslavia with a few hundred dollars, grow potatoes, and learn the history of rock through back issues of Creem magazine.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in The Daily Of The University Of Washington (1989-05-05).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

Anthony de Mello photo
Martin Luther photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“What we must learn to do is to create unbreakable bonds between the sciences and the humanities. We cannot procrastinate. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.”

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

Source: Tomorrow Is Now (1963), p. 134

Jordan Peterson photo

“[I've changed a bit here - see youtube video "Jordan Peterson - Are YOU Antisocial?!"] We have these shared frames of reference, like when we're playing monopoly. Children at three learn to play games, which means that they learn to organize their own internal motivational states into a hierarchy that includes the emotional states of other people. And that means they can play. And that's what everyone does when they're out in the world. That's why we can go about our daily business - we all know the rules. That's why we can sit in the same room without fighting each other. Because you're smart and socially conscious, you can walk into a room full of people and know what to do. If you're civilized and social you can just do it, and you can predict what all the other primates are up to, and they won't kill you. That's what it means to be part of the same tribe. People are very peculiar creatures and God only knows what they're up to. As long as they're playing the same game that you are, you don't have to know what they're up to, and you can predict what they're going to do because you understand their motivational states. And so, part of the building and constructing of higher order moral goals is the establishment of joint frames of reference that allow multiple people to pursue the goals that they're interested in simultaneously. Not all shared frames of reference can manage that. There's a small subset of them that are optimized so that not only can multiple people play them, but multiple people can play them, AND enjoy them, AND do it repeatedly across a long period of time. So it's iterability that partly defines the utility of a higher order moral structure, and that is not arbitrary. It's an emergent property of biological interactions. It's not arbitrary at all, because a lot of what's constraining your games is your motivational substructure and those ancient circuits that are status oriented, which operate within virtually every animal. Virtually every animal has a status counter. Creatures organize themselves into dominance hierarchies. The reason they do that is because that works. It's a solution to the Darwinian problem of existence. It's not just an epiphenomena. It's the real thing. So your environment is fundamentally dominance hierarchy, plus God only knows where you are. And that's order and chaos. And part of the reason people fight to preserve their dominance hierarchies is because it's better to be a slave who knows what the hell is going on than someone who is thrown screaming and naked into the jungle at night. And that's the difference between order and chaos. And we like order better than chaos and it's no wonder. And invite a little chaos in for entertainment now and then, but it has to be done voluntarily, and generally you don't want the kind of chaos that upsets your entire conceptual structure. You're willing to fool around on the fringes a little bit, but you know, when the going gets serious you're pretty much likely to bail out.”

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

Concepts

Georges Clemenceau photo

“All that I know I learned after I was thirty.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

As quoted in And Madly Teach : A Layman Looks at Public School Education (1949) by Mortimer Brewster Smith, p. 27
Post-Prime Ministerial

Claude Monet photo

“There at the moment in Honfleur... Boudin and Jongkind are here; we get on marvelously. There's lots to be learned and nature begins to grow beautiful... I shall tell you I'm sending a flower picture to the exhibition at Rouen; there are very beautiful flowers at present.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter to Frédéric Bazille; as cited in: Edward B. Henning, Cleveland Museum of Art. Creativity in art and science, 1860-1960. (1987), p. 95
1850 - 1870

Luc Besson photo

“Learning's always a painful process.”

Luc Besson (1959) French film director, writer, and producer

Lucy (2014)

Malcolm X photo

“MALCOLM X: Freedom, justice and equality are our principal ambitions. And to faithfully serve and follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the guiding goal of every Muslim. Mr. Muhammad teaches us the knowledge of our own selves, and of our own people. He cleans us up--morally, mentally and spiritually--and he reforms us of the vices that have blinded us here in the Western society. He stops black men from getting drunk, stops their dope addiction if they had it, stops nicotine, gambling, stealing, lying, cheating, fornication, adultery, prostitution, juvenile delinquency. I think of this whenever somebody talks about someone investigating us. Why investigate the Honorable Elijah Muhammad? They should subsidize him. He's cleaning up the mess that white men have made. He's saving the Government millions of dollars, taking black men off of welfare, showing them how to do something for themselves. And Mr. Muhammad teaches us love for our own kind. The white man has taught the black people in this country to hate themselves as inferior, to hate each other, to be divided against each other. Messenger Muhammad restores our love for our own kind, which enables us to work together in unity and harmony. He shows us how to pool our financial resources and our talents, then to work together toward a common objective. Among other things, we have small businesses in most major cities in this country, and we want to create many more. We are taught by Mr. Muhammad that it is very important to improve the black man's economy, and his thrift. But to do this, we must have land of our own. The brainwashed black man can never learn to stand on his own two feet until he is on his own. We must learn to become our own producers, manufacturers and traders; we must have industry of our own, to employ our own. The white man resists this because he wants to keep the black man under his thumb and jurisdiction in white society. He wants to keep the black man always dependent and begging--for jobs, food, clothes, shelter, education. The white man doesn't want to lose somebody to be supreme over. He wants to keep the black man where he can be watched and retarded.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Mr. Muhammad teaches that as soon as we separate from the white man, we will learn that we can do without the white man just as he can do without us. The white man knows that once black men get off to themselves and learn they can do for themselves, the black man's full potential will explode and he will surpass the white man.
Playboy interview, regarding the ambition of the Black Muslims
Attributed

Aphra Behn photo

“He that knew all that ever Learning writ,
Knew only this - that he knew nothing yet.”

Aphra Behn (1640–1689) British playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer

The Emperor of the Moon, Act III, sc. iii.

John Lennon photo
Anastacia photo
Barack Obama photo
Isaac of Nineveh photo
Barack Obama photo

“And if there is one thing that he and this year’s anniversary should teach us, if there’s one lesson I hope that Malia and Sasha and young people everywhere learn from this day, it’s that with enough effort, and enough empathy, and enough perseverance, and enough courage, people who love their country can change it.”

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

Remarks by the President at LBJ Presidential Library Civil Rights Summit at Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas on April 10, 2014. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/10/remarks-president-lbj-presidential-library-civil-rights-summit
2014

Kanō Jigorō photo
Walter Gropius photo
Arthur Jones (inventor) photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“The idea of any social obligation […] just the idea of it embarasses my thoughts for a day, and sometimes it's since the day before that I worry, and don't sleep well, and the real affair, when it happens, is absolutely insignificant and justifies nothing; and the case repeats itself and I never learn to learn.”

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A ideia de uma obrigação social qualquer [...] só essa ideia me estorva os pensamentos de um dia, e às vezes é desde a mesma véspera que me preocupo, e durmo mal, e o caso real, quando se dá, é absolutamente insignificante, não justifica nada; e o caso repete-se e eu não aprendo a aprender.

Ben Carson photo