education - teaching
      

Education is not the filling of a pail,
but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats
   

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is
the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do,
when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not;
it is the first lesson that ought to be learned;
and however early a person’s training begins,
it is probably the last lesson he or she learns thoroughly.

Thomas Henry Huxley

      
Real education should educate us out of self into something
far finer--into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.

Lady Nancy Astor
  
An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory,
or even how much you know.  It’s being able to differentiate
between what you do know and what you don’t.  It’s knowing
where to go to find out what you need to know; and it’s
knowing how to use the information you get.

William Feather
   

Nothing in life is more exciting and rewarding than the sudden
flash of insight that leaves you a changed person,
not only changed, but for the better.

Arthur Gordon

  
The books which help you most are those which make you think the most.

Theodore Parker

A person's mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  
 
  

Learning is not attained by chance.  It must be sought
for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Abigail Adams

  

There is no evil in the universe
which is not the result
of ignorance, and which
would not, if we were ready
and willing to learn its lesson,
lead us to a higher wisdom,
and then vanish away.

James Allen
  

Education should be of value to men and women both as private individuals
and as free, self-reliant, and responsible members of the community to which
they belong.  It should help them, as individuals, to grow in self-mastery and
personal depth, to develop wider and deeper appreciations, to acquire
an enthusiasm for hard work, to love good talk and good books,
to delight in the adventures of intellectual curiosity, to become fair-minded,
open-minded, and generous in all their human responses.

American Association of Colleges

  

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As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught
not the little virtues but the great ones.  Not thrift but generosity and an indifference
to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness
but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one’s neighbor and
self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.

Natalia Ginzburg
 

Most people are just trying to get through the day.  Be committed to learn to get
from the day.  Don’t just get through it; get from it.  Learn from it.  Let the
day teach you.  Join the university of life.  What a difference that will make
in your future.  Commit yourself to learning.  Commit yourself to absorbing.
Be like a sponge.  Get it.  Don’t miss it.

Jim Rohn

   
   

People only begin to grow when they cease to whine and revile, and commence
to search for the hidden justice which regulates their lives.  And as they adapt
their minds to that regulating factor, they cease to accuse others as the cause
of their condition, and build themselves up in strong and noble thoughts.  They
cease to kick against circumstances, but begin to use them as aids to their more
rapid progress, and as a means of discovering the hidden
powers and possibilities within themselves.

 James Allen

  

Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.

Mark Twain

I like to have a person's knowledge comprehend more than
one class of topics, one row of shelves.  I like a person who
likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

education

The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts.
Interesting thoughts can only live in cultivated minds.  Those who decide
to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music,
good books, good pictures, good plays at the theater, good company,
good conversation—what are they?  They are the happiest people
in the world; and they are not only happy in themselves,
they are the cause of happiness in others.

William Lyon Phelps
  

  

Of course, we're obligated to improve ourselves only if
we want to make this world a better place.  If we don't
care about that, then we can spend our lives being
entertained passively, learning nothing new at all.
But then we're not fulfilling our responsibility
of contributing to the world.

tom walsh

  
  

Too much learning makes one proud.  One must bend
one's head, realizing the limitations of reason.
It can only take you to the gate and it has
to be left behind when you enter the realm
of the Spirit.  You have to unlearn what
you have learned and become as
simple and guileless as a child.

Papa Ramdas

   

You can be very, very good at anything you do, but excelling
does take work.  In societies in which we expect life to just 
fall into our laps somehow, we've lost the respect for the value
of developing ourselves, but if we're going to excel, not just succeed,
we must develop ourselves past the ordinary.  Reading a book a week
on a topic of our choice will make us one of the best-read people
in the field within a year.  Then you can solve problems and devise
ideas and plans much more easily and effectively than if you
never had tried to develop your abilities.

unattributed

   
  

When I learn something new--and it happens every day--I feel a little
more at home in the universe, a little more comfortable in the nest.

Bill Moyers

   
So many of our lessons are learned, it would seem,
too late to use on Earth.

Marion Cran

   

If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing
one can do is to study the words of those who were.

Aldous Huxley

   
   

Trees and stones will teach you that which
you can never learn from masters.

Bernard of Clairvaux

   
   
Only an open mind still has room for new knowledge.  What is outgrown
and used up must be discarded to make room for what is yet to be learned.
And much of the best thinking is done alone--in deserts, on beaches,
in bed, behind closed doors.  It is why we say we need to get away--to
escape from clutter and busyness--to hear ourselves think.

Robert Fulghum

   

   

You know that I don't believe that anyone has ever taught anything
to anyone.  I question the efficacy of teaching.  The only thing
that I know is that anyone who wants to learn will learn.  And maybe
a teacher is a facilitator, a person who puts things down and shows
people how exciting and wonderful it is and asks them to eat.

Carl Rogers

    

As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those things that hurt, instruct."
It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually
to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.

M. Scott Peck

   

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.
Anyone who keeps learning stays young.  The greatest thing
in life is to keep your mind young.

Henry Ford

    

The teaching which is written on paper is not the true teaching.  Written
teaching is a kind of food for your brain.  Of course it is necessary to take
some food for your brain, but it is more important
to be yourself by practicing the right way of life.

Suzuki Roshi

   
We do not learn only from great minds; we learn from everyone, if only we observe and inquire.  I received my greatest lesson in aesthetics from an old man in an Athenian taverna.  Night after night he sat alone at the same table, drinking his wine with precisely the same movements.  I finally asked him why he did this, and he said, "Young man, I first look at my glass to please my eyes, then I take it in my hand to please my hand, than I bring it to my nose to please my nostrils, and I am just about to bring it to my lips when I hear a small voice in my ears, 'How about me?'  So I tap my glass on the table before I drink from it.  I thus please all five senses."

C.A. Doxiadis
   

   
Anybody who has ever "gotten it" by following some so-called method,
has gotten it in spite of the method, not because of it.

Lee Lozowick
   

Confucius said, "The young people should be good sons and daughters
at home, polite and respectful in society; they should be careful in their
conduct and faithful, love the people, and associate themselves with the
kind people.  If after learning all this, they still have the energy left,
let them read books.

   

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Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn
from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their
apparent disinclination to do so.

Douglas Adams

   
The barrier during self-improvement is not so much that
we hate learning, rather we hate being taught. To learn
entails that the knowledge was achieved on one's own
accord--it feels great--but to be taught often leaves a
feeling of inferiority. Thus it takes a bit of determination
and a lot of humility in order for one to fully develop.

Criss Jami
   

   

Learning is the beginning of wealth.  Learning is the beginning of health.
Learning is the beginning of spirituality.  Searching and learning
is where the miracle process all begins.

Jim Rohn

   
When you find yourself in a frustrating situation repeatedly, instead
of fighting it or asking why this always seems to happen, try asking
yourself, "What am I supposed to be learning here?"  You may be
surprised at the answers that come from within you.  Life's lessons
may be viewed as difficulties or challenges to be overcome, but in
reality they are exercises in fine-tuning that will make our efforts
more effective in the long run.  We are developing skills, attitudes, and
perspectives that we need to move forward with insight and awareness.

Gail Pursell Elliott
   

When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and
asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.

Lillian Smith

    

   

Place yourself among those who carry on their lives with passion, and true learning
will take place, no matter how humble or exalted the setting.  But no matter what
path you follow, do not be ashamed of your learning.  In some corner of your life,
you know more about something than anyone else on earth.  The true measure of
your education is not what you know, but how you share what you know with others.

Kent Nerburn

education

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, "is to learn something.
That is the only thing that never fails.  You may grow old and trembling
in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder
of your veins. . . . you may see the world around you devastated by
evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds.
There is only one thing for it then--to learn.  Learn why the world wags
and what wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind can never
exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust,
never dream of regretting.  Learning is the thing for you.

T.H. White
The Once and Future King
   

The modern school without systematic lectures turns out many graduates
who lack retention. No sooner has the sound of the word left their
teacher's lips, the subject has been forgotten.

Arthur Schomburg

   

Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of
unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn
best by being "with it," yet school makes them identify their personal,
cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.

Ivan Illich
Deschooling Society

   
Schools assume that children are not interested in learning and are not
much good at it, that they will not learn unless made to, that they cannot
learn unless shown how, and that the way to make them learn is to
divide up the prescribed material into a sequence of tiny tasks to be
mastered one at a time, each with its appropriate "morsel" and "shock."
And when this method doesn't work, the schools assume there is something
wrong with the children -- something they must try to diagnose and treat.

John Holt