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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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

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

“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

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

“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!

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“A person who doesn’t learn from the past is an idiot, in my estimation.” Stephen King, 11/22/63

“The best thing for being sad . . . is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails.” T. H. White, The Once and Future King

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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, White House Years

“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

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

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

“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

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

“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

“it is impossible for anyone to set out to learn what he thinks he already knows.” Epictetus, Discourses

“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

“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

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Related topics

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

Related authors

John Dewey (2)
Plato (3)
Paulo Coelho (3)
Ray Bradbury (3)
Orson Scott Card (3)
Aldous Huxley (2)
Lao Tzu (2)
Stephen King (2)
C. S. Lewis (2)
Rudyard Kipling (2)
Confucius (1)
Maya Angelou (1)
Haruki Murakami (1)
Louisa May Alcott (1)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
Samuel Johnson (1)
Carl Sagan (1)
Henry David Thoreau (1)
Neil Gaiman (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)
Fahrenheit 451 (2)
Mere Christianity (2)
The Jungle Book (2)
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (1)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1)
Analects (1)
The Devil's Dictionary (1)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (1)
Walden (1)
On Nature (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1)
A Game of Thrones (1)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1)