Quotes about studying
page 7

Albrecht Thaer photo

“Arriving in Berlin, I found myself in my element, and began to breathe freely. Jerusalem and Lessing had given us letters of introduction to the greatest men in Berlin; but they knew us already, Leisewitz as author of "Julius Von Tarent," and myself as author of my Dissertation. We had daily the choice of the first society; covers were laid for us in the first families daily, for dinner as well as supper. Von Zetlitz sent a general invitation that covers were laid for us every day during our stay in Berlin. Most of the time we could spare was divided between physicians and philosophers, of which the latter had the greater share. Spalding, Mendelsohn, Eberhard, Engel, Nicolai, Reichard, and Madame Bamberger, daughter of Doctor Sack, Bishop of Berlin, honoured us with their most sincere friendship. The latter, a highly gifted and accomplished lady, possessed the rare art of spreading over the most abstract hypothesis and theorem the brightest and most charming light; Jerusalem, the father of the ill-fated Werther (see the "Sorrows of Werther," by Goethe), used to send her his works to correct, and she alone was able to console and comfort him, when he was informed of the death of his beloved son. This amiable lady assumes in common life the character of a plain woman, and when at court, as friend of the Queen and the Princess Amalie, she won all hearts by her truly noble man ners and unconstrained courtesy: at court beloved, she was admired, nay, adored in the philosophical clubs. But do not think that here alone we spent all our time; Madame Bamberger knew how to blend study with amusement; she issued frequently cards of invitation to select parties, for suppers and balls, and her house was the point of union of all that was learned, beautiful, and amiable. Thus Berlin became my Paradise. I had the most tempting offers from the Minister of State to stay here; but the illness of my father obliged me, after a stay of three months, to return home. I visited Lessing on my journey back; stayed two days, which were the most interesting of all days I ever remember.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Albert Hofmann photo
Rachel Riley photo

“When you tell people that you are studying maths at uni, they are like, “Oh …”. Especially a blonde Essex girl.”

Rachel Riley (1986) television presenter

Interview, The Observer, 12 Oct 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/oct/12/rachel-riley-countdown-stop-saying-girls-arent-good-at-maths

Fritz Leiber photo

“It was always worth everything to get away by himself, climb a bit, and study the heavens.”

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 3 (p. 26).

Michael Lewis photo
Warren Farrell photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“Successful people never forget what they love to do and are passionate about. They quickly learn to follow their own path and to make the right choices, no matter how crazy or unpopular they might appear to others. Just look at Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, who quit studying at a prestigious university to pursue his dreams.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Jacob Leupold photo
Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo
Stanley Baldwin photo

“As we study [the British Empire's] destiny, we are bound to think of it less as a human achievement than as an instrument of Divine Providence for the promotion of the progress of mankind.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Hyde Park (24 May 1929), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 26.
1929

Reuven Rivlin photo

“Specifically, in these days when brutal and murderous terrorism seeks to drive us apart, we must reiterate to ourselves – here, in the Knesset, in schools, in academia and in the halls of Torah study – that to be Jewish is democratic and democracy is Jewish. Only in this way can we know that brutal terrorism will not break us physically, or our spirit.”

Reuven Rivlin (1939) Israeli politician, 10th President of Israel

This bill strikes at Israel’s heart http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/27/bill-israel-judaism-democracy-president-israel-jewishness-reuven-rivlin, 27 November 2014

“When study becomes labor, we had better change the subject-matter as quickly as possible.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 35

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell photo
Athanasius of Alexandria photo
C. V. Raman photo

“The pages of Euclid are like the opening bars of the music of the Grand Opera of Nature's great drama. So to say, they lift the veil and show to our vision a glimpse of a vast world of natural knowledge awaiting study.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman:A Legend of Modern Indian Science, 22 November 2013, Official Government of India's website Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/cvraman/raman1.htm,

Wassily Kandinsky photo

“First I will make different color tests: I will study the dark – deep blue, deep violet, deep dirty green, etc. Often I see the colors before my eyes. Sometimes I imitate with my lips the deep sounds of the trumpet – then I see various deep mixtures which the word is uncapable od conceiving and which the palette can only feebly reproduce.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote in Kandinsky's letter to Gabriele Münter, 1915; as cited in Schönberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 16 note 54
1910 - 1915

Willem Roelofs photo

“There is still some study [to do] here for the Dutch landscape, and I believe the best I can do is to stay some time longer. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Er is hier voor het Hollandsch landschap nog al wat studie en ik geloof beste te doen nog maar wat te blijven.
Quote of Roelofs in his letter from Schiedam, Summer 1865; as cited in Zó Hollands - Het Hollandse landschap in de Nederlandse kunst sinds 1850, Antoon Erftemeijer https://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/zohollands_eindversie_def_1.pdf; Frans Hals museum | De Hallen, Haarlem 2011, p. 16
in the Summer of 1865 Roelofs was visiting Schiedam and its surrounding polders. In 1866 he came back here, for making his sketches in open air
1860's

Stanislav Grof photo
Paul Klee photo
John McCarthy photo

“[This] is or should be our main scientific activity — studying the structure of information and the structure of problem solving processes independently of applications and independently of its realization in animals or humans.”

John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist

John McCarthy (1974), quoted in: Joscha Bach (2009) Principles of Synthetic Intelligence PSI, p. 233
1970s

Robert Pinsky photo
Isaac Barrow photo
Lyndall Urwick photo

“To study the art of living is to engage in one of its forms.”

Alexander Nehamas (1946) Professor of philosophy

Source: The Art of Living (1998), p. 15.

Paul Klee photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“What preoccupies most scientists now is not how much they know compared to 50 years ago, though that is enormous as a difference, but how little they know compared to what they're finding out […] For a few milliseconds really of cosmic time our species has lived on one very very small rock, in a very small solar system that's a part of a fantastically unimportant suburb, in one of an uncountable number of galaxies […] Every single second since the big bang a star the size of our sun has blown up, gone to nothing […] And indeed physicists now exist who can tell you the date on which our sun will follow suit […] We know when it's [the world] coming to an end and we know how it will be, but we know something even more extraordinary which is the rate of expansion of this explosion we're looming through is actually speeding up. Our universe is flying apart further and faster than we thought it was […] Everyone who studies it professionally finds it impossible to reconcile this extraordinarily destructive, chaotic, self-destructive process, to find in it the finger of god, to find in that the idea of a design. And it's not just because we know so little about it, it's because what we know about it that's essential doesn't seem as if it's the intended result brought about by a divine-benign creator who loves every single one of us living as we do on this tiny rock in this negligible suburb of the cosmos.”

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

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuloBOYolE&t=11m29s
2010s, 2010

Joe Barton photo
Louis Althusser photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo

“Study of the scientific world cannot prescribe the orientation of something which is excluded from the scientific world.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

IV, p.43
Science and the Unseen World (1929)

“Another reason for studying philosophy is that it provides a good way of learning to think more clearly about a wide range of issues.”

Nigel Warburton (1962) British author and lecturer

Philosophy : the basics (Fifth Edition, 2013), Introduction

Herbie Brennan photo
Damian Pettigrew photo
Yehudi Menuhin photo
William Congreve photo

“Invention flags, his brain goes muddy,
And black despair succeeds brown study.”

William Congreve (1670–1729) British writer

"An Impossible Thing", line 105 (1720)

Paul Signac photo

“Frankly, this is my position: I have been painting for two years, and my only models have been your [ Monet's ] own works; I have been following the wonderful path you broke for us. I have always worked regularly and conscientiously, but without advice or help, for I do not know any impressionist painter who would be able to guide me, living as I am in an environment more or less hostile to what I am doing. And so I fear I may lose my way, and I beg you to let me see you, if only for a short visit. I should be happy to show you five or six studies; perhaps you would tell me what you think of them and give me the advice I need so badly, for the fact is that I have the most horrible doubts, having always worked by myself, without teacher, encouragement, or criticism.”

Paul Signac (1863–1935) French painter

In a letter to Claude Monet, 1880; quoted by Geffroy: Claude Monet, vol. I, p. 175; as quoted by John Rewald, in Georges Seurat', a monograph https://ia800607.us.archive.org/23/items/georges00rewa/georges00rewa.pdf; Wittenborn and Compagny, New York, 1943. p. 15
In 1880 an exhibition of the works of Claude Monet had - as Signac was to say later - 'decided his career,' - and after his first efforts as an impressionist Signac had ventured to appeal to Monet, writing him this sentence in his letter

James D. Watson photo
Caterina Davinio photo
William Ellery Channing photo
James Meade photo
Charles A. Beard photo

“The word science of administration has been used. There are many who object to the term. Now if by science is meant a conceptual scheme of things in which every particularity coveted may be assigned a mathematical value, then administration is not a science. In this sense only astro-physics may be called a science and it is well to remember that mechanical laws of the heavens tell us nothing about the color and composition of the stars and as yet cannot account for some of the disturbances and explosions which seem accidental. If, on the other hand, we may rightly use the term science in connection with a body of exact knowledge derived from experience and observation, and a body of rules or axioms which experience has demonstrated to be applicable in concrete practice, and to work out in practice approximately as forecast, then we may, if we please, appropriately and for convenience, speak of a science of administration. Once, when the great French mathematician, Poincaré, was asked whether Euclidean geometry is true, he replied that the question had no sense but that Euclidean geometry is and still remains the most convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that a science is, among other things, a particular branch of knowledge or study; a recognized department of learning.”

Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) American historian

Source: Philosophy, Science and Art of Public Administration (1939), p. 660-1

George F. Kennan photo
Max Brooks photo
Edgar Degas photo

“I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote of Degas, as cited by Walter Sickert, in 'Post-Impressionism and Cubism', Pall Mall Gazette (1914-03-11).
According to Sickert, Degas had said this quote to him in 1885
1876 - 1895

Sten Nadolny photo
Ragnar Frisch photo
Georges Seurat photo
Richard Arkwright photo

“Mr. Arkwright, after many years intense and painful application, invented, about the year 1768, his present method of spinning cotton, but upon very different principles from any invention that had gone before it. He was himself a native of Lancashire; but having so recently witnessed the ungenerous treatment of poor Hargrave, by the people of that county, he retired to Nottingham, and obtained a patent in the year 1769, for making cotton, flax, and wool into yarn. But, after some experience, finding that the common method of preparing the materials for spinning (which is essentially necessary to the perfection of good yarn) was very imperfect, tedious, and expensive, he turned his thoughts towards the construction of engines for that purpose; and, in the pursuit, spent several years of intense study and labour, and at last produced an invention for carding and preparing the materials, founded in some measure on the principles of his first machine. These inventions, united, completed his great original plan. But his last machines being very complicated, and containing some things materially different in their construction, and some others materially different in their use, from the inventions for which his first patent was obtained, be procured a patent for these also in December, 1775.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

Source: The Case of Mr. Richard Arkwright and Co., 1781, p. 23

Seneca the Younger photo

“The old Romans had a custom which survived even into my lifetime. They would add to the opening words of a letter: "If you are well, it is well; I also am well." Persons like ourselves would do well to say. "If you are studying philosophy, it is well." For this is just what "being well" means. Without philosophy the mind is sickly.”
Mos antiquis fuit, usque ad meam servatus aetatem, primis epistulae verbis adicere 'si vales bene est, ego valeo'. Recte nos dicimus 'si philosopharis, bene est'. Valere enim hoc demum est. Sine hoc aeger est animus.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Mos antiquis fuit, usque ad meam servatus aetatem, primis epistulae verbis adicere 'si vales bene est, ego valeo'. Recte nos dicimus 'si philosopharis, bene est'.
Valere enim hoc demum est. Sine hoc aeger est animus.
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XV

Eunice Kennedy Shriver photo
Averroes photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“A double problem arises: There is first the difficulty of, if not the impossibility of demonstrating the existence of any creator or designer at all. I think I say something uncontroversial when I say that no theologian has ever conclusively demonstrated that such a designer can or does or ever has existed. The most you can do, by way of the argument from design, is to infer him or her or it from an apparent harmony in the arrangements - and this was at a time when that was the very best that, so to speak, could be done. But religion goes a little further than this already rather impossible task, and expects us to believe as follows: that the speaker not only can prove the existence of a said entity, but can claim to know this entity's mind - in fact, can claim to know it quite intimately; can claim to know his or her personal wishes; can, in turn, tell you what you may do, in his name - a quite large arrogation of power, you will suddenly notice, is being granted to the speaker here. The speaker can tell you that he knows - he cannot tell you how - but he can tell you that he knows, for example, that heaven hates ham, that god doesn't want you to eat pork products; he can tell you that god has a very very strong view about with whom you may have sexual relations, indeed, how you may have sexual relations with others; he can indicate, perhaps a little less convincingly but no less firmly, that there are certain books or courses of study that you might want to avoid or treat with great suspicion.”

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

Christopher Hitchens vs. Marvin Olasky, 14/05/2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMgMUHD_kPI?t=1m35s
2000s, 2007

Harry Chapin photo

“We've more important studies than your fantasies and fears
You know that rock's been perched up there for a hundred thousand years.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

The Rock
Song lyrics, Portrait Gallery (1975)

Jeremy Rifkin photo
Thomas Young (scientist) photo
George Klir photo
Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo
John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh photo
Andrew Dickson White photo
Gideon Mantell photo
Plutarch photo
Hilaire Belloc photo
Paul Klee photo

“And now an altogether revolutionary discovery: to adapt oneself to the contents of the paintbox is more important than [to] nature and its study. I must some day be able to improvise freely on the chromatic keyboard of the rows of watercolor cup.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1911), Diary # 873; as cited by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee Part Four', : Klee as an Expressionist and Constructivist Painter http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev27.html
1911 - 1914

David Brewster photo
Arun Shourie photo
James Hudson Taylor photo

“Consider six or eight hours a day sacred to the Lord and His work, and let nothing hinder your giving this time (to language study and practice) till you can preach fluently and intelligibly.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 230).

Kwame Nkrumah photo
Umberto Veronesi photo
Gustave de Molinari photo
Aidan Nichols photo
Joshua Reynolds photo

“The art of seeing Nature, or in other words, the art of using Models, is in reality the great object, the point to which all our studies are directed.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourse no. 12; vol. 2, p. 104.
Discourses on Art

Richard Rodríguez photo
Hariprasad Chaurasia photo
Bill Sali photo
John Angell James photo