Learning Quotes

“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.”
― Doris Lessing

“When I was a little girl, everything in the world fell into either of these two categories: wrong or right. Black or white. Now that I am an adult, I have put childish things aside and now I know that some things fall into wrong and some things fall into right. Some things are categorized as black and some things are categorized as white. But most things in the world aren't either! Most things in the world aren't black, aren't white, aren't wrong, aren't right, but most of everything is just different. And now I know that there's nothing wrong with different, and that we can let things be different, we don't have to try and make them black or white, we can just let them be grey. And when I was a child, I thought that God was the God who only saw black and white. Now that I am no longer a child, I can see, that God is the God who can see the black and the white and the grey, too, and He dances on the grey! Grey is okay.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.”
― Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

“When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn't climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened.”
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

[Undelivered remarks for Dallas Trade Mart, November 22 1963]”
― John F. Kennedy

“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

“Too many of us take great pains with what we ingest through our mouths, and far less with what we partake of through our ears and eyes.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

“Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world's work, and the power to appreciate life.”
― Brigham Young

“You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”
― Abigail Adams

“The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Birds

“The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness, and worship without awareness.”
― Anthony de Mello

“The only things you learn are the things you tame”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Small minds have always lashed out at what they don't understand.”
― Dan Brown

“I met a boy whose eyes showed me that the past, present and future were all the same thing.”
― Jennifer Elisabeth

“To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Stop trying to be less of who you are. Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back.”
― Jennifer Elisabeth, Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl

“Do you train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?”
― Noam Chomsky

“I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.”
― Aristotle

“He was twenty. I remembered twenty. I'd known everything at twenty. It took me another year to realize I knew nothing. I was still hoping to learn something before I hit thirty, but I wasn't holding my breath.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, Circus of the Damned

“What I learned on my own I still remember”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of being challenged, and for the sake of being expressive, to offer something to someone else, to learn what we are capable of.”
― Jason Mraz

“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

“A stumble may prevent a fall.”
― Thomas Fuller

“Love, too, has to be learned.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
― Richard Buckminster Fuller