quotes and quotations on learning

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

William Butler Yeats

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. Dr. Seuss I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's 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 miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour 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, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn. T.H. White The Once and Future King

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

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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

"But what if I make a mistake?" Will asked.

Gilan threw back his head and laughed. "A mistake? One mistake?
You should be so lucky. You'll make dozens! I made four or five on
my first day alone! Of course you'll make mistakes. Just don't make
any of them twice. If you do mess things up, don't try to hide it.
Don't try to rationalize it. Recognize it and admit it and learn
from it. We never stop learning, none of us."

John Flanagan
Erak's Ransom

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

Albert Einstein

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

All subjects are the same. I memorize notes for a test, spew it, ace it,
then forget it. What makes this scary for the future of our country is
that I'm in the tip-top percentile on every standardized test. I'm a
model student with a very crappy attitude about learning.

Megan McCafferty
Sloppy Firsts

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

The growth of understanding follows an ascending spiral
rather than a straight line.

Joanna Field (Marion Milner)

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

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.

Mary Catherine Bateson

Articles and book excerpts on learning:

Alex      tom walsh
Education      Kent Nerburn
The Christmas Alone      tom walsh
Four Words That Make Life Worthwhile      Jim Rohn
If. . . .      Author Unknown
It's a Mistake!      tom walsh
It's Never Too Late to Learn      Michael C. Futa
Releasing the Past      Jeff Keller
Self-Improvement as It Applies to You      Robert Taylor
The Teachers in My Life      tom walsh
A Teaching on Heaven and Hell
What I Hope      Paul Harvey
What's Your View?      Ray Whiting
The Untold Truth about Mentors, and Why You Don't Need "One"     David Riklan
The Art of Getting Along       Wilferd A. Peterson

When I was young (about eight or ten years old), I was trying to
learn so many things all at once, things like the piano and organ
and algebra and cooking and typing, and I even started to take
clarinet lessons. But I just didn't practice the clarinet, so I didn't
learn. I think I wanted to learn by magic. I think that I had the
idea that if I got the clarinet I would somehow know how to play
it. But magic doesn't work with learning, not with
anything really worthwhile.

Fred Rogers
The World According to Mr. Rogers

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

Bernard of Clairvaux

To know is to arrive; to ask questions is to embark on a quest. People whose
lives are characterized by a question mark rather than a period, who look for
learning opportunities everywhere they go, are generally happier, are more
creative, enjoy better relationships, and attain higher levels of success.
To be a lifelong learner is both fun and functional,
and all we need to travel along that path is a humble heart and a curious mind.
Every person we meet—a student or a teacher, a friend or a stranger—can
teach us something; each experience holds within it an important lesson; in
every moment is a message waiting to be discovered. When we embrace the
spirit of inquiry and curiosity, we embrace life. How wonderful it is that this
life is an inexhaustible source of wonders. How exciting to learn that
the excitement of learning can last a lifetime.

Tal Ben-Shahar
Choose the Life You Want

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."

Thus children learn, by wiggling skills through their fingers and
their toes, into themselves. By soaking up habits and attitudes
of those around them, by pushing and pulling their own worlds.
Thus children learn, more through trial than error, more through
pleasure than pain, more through experience than suggestion
and telling, and more through suggestion than direction. And thus
children learn through affection, through love, through patience,
through understanding, through belonging, through doing and
being. Day by day children come to know a little bit of what you
know, a little bit more of what you think and understand. That
which you dream and believe are in truth what is becoming those
children. As you perceive dully or clearly, as you think fuzzily or
sharply, as you believe foolishly or wisely, as you dream drably
or goldenly, as you bear false witness or tell the truth,
thus children learn.

Frederick Moffett

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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

Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It
just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It
wouldn't be half so interesting if we knew all about everything.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

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 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

We learn to believe by believing. We learn to love by loving. The
practice of acting on a certain thing, even (or especially) when
feeling is absent, embodies the entire "how" of growth.

Eugenia Price

When people want to win they will go to desperate extremes. However, anyone
that has already won in life has come to the conclusion that there is no game.
There is nothing but learning in this life and it is the only thing we take with us to
the grave—knowledge. If you only understood that concept then your heart
wouldn’t break so bad. Jealousy or revenge wouldn’t be your ambition.
Stepping on others to raise yourself up wouldn’t be a goal. Competition would
be left on the playing field, and your freedom from what other people think
about you would light the pathway out of hell.

Shannon L. Alder

Learn everything you possibly can, and you will discover
later that none of it was superfluous.

Hugh of St. Victor

In times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find
themselves beautifully equipped to deal with
a world that no longer exists.

Eric Hoffer

In our human corner of the natural world, learning for us is also the name of the game. And since you and I have so much to learn, I think of human life as a kind of kindergarten. After all, it's in the kindergarten time of our lives that we get the sense in the deepest part of our being that everything happens for a reason. You fell down, so you learned to look where you were going. Your friend moved away and you learned that you could make new friends.

In most childhoods and in the happy part of all childhoods, life gleams with meaning and we all hope this will never stop.

Welcome to Cosmic Kindergarten. Shins are bruised, tears are shed, moods get blue. But this is the kind of kindergarten you never leave, nor do you ever really want to. Valuable lessons are always being learned and there are endless wonderful gifts waiting for us, especially as a result of the tough breaks we have to deal with.

Mira Kirshenbaum
Everything Happens for a Reason

"Live and learn" can be a wise motto to live by if you agree that
no one's education is ever complete. It isn't by trying to squeeze
the required thought out of our brain cells that we can get the
knowledge we need. Rather, it is by opening up our thoughts
with the implicit understanding that we may become more open
to the infinite mind of God in universal free form. Who knows
what realms of knowledge and learning abide therein, waiting for
us to be receptive! Wherever we are and whatever we are doing,
it is possible to learn something that can release outmoded ways
of thinking and acting in order to try something new. But when
we do, we often find that life becomes more exciting and fulfilling
than perhaps we dreamed possible.

John Marks Templeton
Worldwide Laws of Life