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Learning quotes

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“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

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

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

“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

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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool.” Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“I wonder what becomes of lost opportunities. Perhaps our guardian angel gathers them up as we drop them, and will give them back to us in the beautiful sometime when we have grown wiser, and learned how to use them rightly.” Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.” James Joyce, Ulysses

“Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn't you warn me? Ladies know what to fend hands against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance o' learning in that way, and you did not help me!” Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles

“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!

“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

“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

“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“There is only one way to learn . . . It's through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

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

“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

“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

“The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.” Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History

“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

“LEARNING, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

“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 the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.” Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“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

“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

“if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you.” J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.” Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands.” Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning

“I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted it was worth knowing.” Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

“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

“the books—the generous friends who met me without suspicion—the merciful masters who never used me ill!” Wilkie Collins, Armadale

“Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.” David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Love is fragile . . . but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said. The new love words, the tendernesses learned, are treasured up for the next lover.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tales of the Jazz Age

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Related topics

education teaching thinking work wisdom progress knowledge books life experience science ignorance change growth understanding humility past reading decision mistake

Related authors

John Dewey (2)
Plato (3)
Paulo Coelho (3)
Ray Bradbury (3)
Orson Scott Card (3)
Aldous Huxley (2)
Lao Tzu (2)
C. S. Lewis (2)
Stephen King (2)
Rudyard Kipling (2)
Maya Angelou (1)
Haruki Murakami (1)
Confucius (1)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1)
Carl Sagan (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
George R. R. Martin (1)
Louisa May Alcott (1)
Lewis Carroll (1)
Henry David Thoreau (1)

Related sources

Brave New World (2)
The Republic (3)
Ender's Game (3)
Democracy and Education (2)
Tao Te Ching (2)
The Alchemist (2)
Mere Christianity (2)
Fahrenheit 451 (2)
The Jungle Book (2)
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (1)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1)
The Devil's Dictionary (1)
Analects (1)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (1)
A Game of Thrones (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
Walden (1)
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1)
The Catcher in the Rye (1)