Purification
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: The Master insisted that what he taught was nothing, what he did was nothing.
His disciples gradually discovered that Wisdom comes to those who learn nothing, unlearn everything.
That transformation is the consequence not of something done, but of something dropped.
“Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.”
The Ringworld Throne (1996)
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Larry Niven 138
American writer 1938Related quotes
“The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.”
“When asked what learning was the most necessary, he said, "Not to unlearn what you have learned."”
Antisthenes, 4.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 6: The Cynics
“The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.”
“All the lessons learned, unlearned”
"Fall of a City"
Selected Poems (1941)
Context: All the lessons learned, unlearned;
The young, who learned to read, now blind
Their eyes with an archaic film;
The peasant relapses to a stumbling tune
Following the donkey`s bray;
These only remember to forget. But somewhere some word presses
On the high door of a skull and in some corner
Of an irrefrangible eye
Some old man memory jumps to a child
— Spark from the days of energy.
And the child hoards it like a bitter toy.
“5085. 'Tis harder to unlearn than learn.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“The most necessary learning is that which unlearns evil. ”
§ 4
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius
§ 7
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius
“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn.”