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Learning quotes

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“Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.” Confucius, “Analects”

“You can't learn a science unless you know what it's all about.” Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World” - 1932

“Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.” Plato, “The Republic”

“I don't know how long it will last, but I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.” Louisa May Alcott, “Little Women” - 1868

“Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.” L. Frank Baum, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” - 1900

“You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.” Dr. Seuss, “Oh, The Places You'll Go!” - 1990

“I wouldn’t miss Mrs. Flowers, because she had given me her secret word which would help me all my life: books.” Maya Angelou, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” - 1969

“Willing emancipateth: for willing is creating: so do I teach. And only for creating shall ye learn!” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” - 1891

“And so he learned to read. From then on his progress was rapid.” Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes” - 1912

“I had really only three assets: I was keenly interested, I accepted every challenge and every opportunity to learn more, and I had great energy and self-discipline.” Eleanor Roosevelt, “The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt” - 1961

“A great nation is like a great man: When he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers. He thinks of his enemy...” Lao Tzu, “Tao Te Ching” - 4th century BC

“What is a good man but a bad man's teacher? What is a bad man but a good man's job?” Lao Tzu, “Tao Te Ching” - 4th century BC

“We grow up in isolation. Only slowly do we teach ourselves the Cosmos.” Carl Sagan, “Cosmos” - 1980

“Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly be charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.” Samuel Johnson, “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia” - 1759

“Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.” Stephen King, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” - 2000

“Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!” Ray Bradbury, “Fahrenheit 451” - 1953

“Real wisdom is being stored away in the subcellars by the misers of learning.” Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer” - 1934

“Much learning does not teach understanding, otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecataeus.” Heraclitus, “On Nature” - c. 535 – c. 475 BCE

“For it assumed that the aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education—or that the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth.” John Dewey, “Democracy and Education” - 1916

“All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.” Neil Gaiman, “American Gods” - 2001

“The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.” Haruki Murakami, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” - 2007

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them” Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics” - c. 334 BC - 330 BC

“When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one's...” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“Don't be afraid! We won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.” Charles Dickens, “Oliver Twist” - 1838

“Our experience is coloured through and through by books and plays and the cinema, and it takes patience and skill to disentangle the things we have really learned from life for ourselves.” C. S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity” - 1952

“And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat.” Rudyard Kipling, “The Jungle Book” - 1894

“A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall was a good fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall, and landed on his feet.” Rudyard Kipling, “The Jungle Book” - 1894

“They had not yet learned to draw the significant but often very fine distinction between smut and pure science.” Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World” - 1932

“The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstructions in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought so far to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind.” David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” - 1748

“Then, my good friend, I said, do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to find out the natural bent.” Plato, “The Republic”

“No tools will make a man a skilled workman, or master of defence, nor be of any use to him who has not learned how to handle them, and has never bestowed any attention upon them.” Plato, “The Republic”

“It’s hard at times, but it makes a kid strong in ways that most people can’t understand. Teaches them that even though people are left behind, new ones will inevitably take their place; that every place has something good—and bad—to...” Nicholas Sparks, “The Lucky One” - 2008

“Complacency is the enemy of study. We cannot really learn anything until we rid ourselves of complacency.” Mao Zedong, “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung” - 1964

“Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.” Henry Kissinger, “The White House Years” - 1979

“I stole their future from them; I can only begin to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.” Orson Scott Card, “Ender's Game” - 1985

“Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.” Orson Scott Card, “Ender's Game” - 1985

“You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs, especially if you’re a singer who has plenty of them and you’re learning more every day.” Bob Dylan, “Chronicles, Volume One” - 2004

“They give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results.” John Dewey, “Democracy and Education” - 1916

“people never learn anything by being told; they have to find out for themselves.” Paulo Coelho, “Veronika Decides to Die” - 1998

“I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things.” Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” - 1988

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Henry David Thoreau, “Walden” - 1854

“If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.” Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged” - 1957

“A bruise is a lesson . . . and each lesson makes us better.” George R. R. Martin, “A Game of Thrones” - 1996

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched...” C. S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity” - 1952

Related topics

education knowledge books teaching experience growth science life understanding change mistake work thinking progress decision compulsion doing wisdom slowness mind

Related authors

Plato (3)
C. S. Lewis (2)
Rudyard Kipling (2)
Aldous Huxley (2)
Paulo Coelho (2)
Lao Tzu (2)
Orson Scott Card (2)
John Dewey (2)
George R. R. Martin (1)
Charlotte Brontë (1)
Charles Dickens (1)
Henry David Thoreau (1)
Heraclitus (1)
Dr. Seuss (1)
Maya Angelou (1)
David Hume (1)
Ayn Rand (1)
Aristotle (1)
Confucius (1)
Louisa May Alcott (1)

Related sources

The Republic (3)
Mere Christianity (2)
The Jungle Book (2)
Brave New World (2)
Tao Te Ching (2)
Ender's Game (2)
Democracy and Education (2)
A Game of Thrones (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
Oliver Twist (1)
On Nature (1)
Oh, The Places You'll Go! (1)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1)
The Alchemist (1)
Analects (1)
Little Women (1)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1)
Tarzan of the Apes (1)