Learning Quotations
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LEARNING, CHANGE, GROWTH
In how you learn is the secret of how you unlearn.
Stanley Keleman, Somatic Reality
FREEDOM
Liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in
vain.
J.F. Kennedy, speech, 3/18/1963
Thus appears the fifth freedom-- freedom from the learned,, cultural mind. The freedom to
expand one's consciousness beyond artifactual cultural knowledge. The freedom to move from
constant preoccupation with the verbal games, the game of self-- to the joyous
unity of what exists beyond.
Timothy Leary, Foreword To Watts' Joyous Cosmology
INSIGHT, LEARNING, KNOWLEDGE
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann, A preface to Morals, 1929
GROWTH, LEARNING, EXPERIENCE, FLAWS, ERRORS, CHANGE,
EVOLUTION
"The sages do not consider that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe,
rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and
continually to make a new man of himself."
Wang Yang Ming (15th century) quoted by Helena Kuo
READING, LITERACY, OPPORTUNITY, KNOWLEDGE
...as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now
begin to understand what the book was saying.
Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened.
Malcolm X, his autobiography-- on learning to read.
The heart of the wise teaches his mouth, and adds learning to his lips.
Old Testament: Proverbs, xvi, 23
EVOLUTION, GROWTH, DISCOVERY, KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING,
"...every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth
that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but
every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and
under every deep a lower deep opens."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Circles
LEARNING, ADVERSITY, OLD AGE
Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old
age.
Aristotle
"...should have drunk at the true fountain of knowledge, yea, rather,
should have a fountain of learning in himself...."
Bacon, Francis; Advancement of Learning, 1605
EDUCATION, KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING
Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge.
Claude Bernard
COGNITIVE, PERCEPTION, INSIGHT, VISION, AWARENESS, LOSS.
KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING UNDERSTANDING, MAYA
"Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth."
Borne, Ludwig (two dots over o) (1786-1837)
IDEAS, NOVELTY, DISCOVERY, LEARNING, TEACHING
He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me the news of a great
thought, before unknown.
Bovee
MACROs, UNDERSTANDING, POWER, INSIGHT, COOPERATION,
COACHING, MENTOR, TEACHER, LEARN, CONSULT
"He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who
profits of a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of
the superior understanding he unites with."
Burke ,Edmund ,1729-1797, 12/20/86
ART, INTUITION, LEARNING, INNOCENCE
In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not
learned.
Chamfort
LEARNING, TEACHING, HEART
The best lessons come from the heart.
Cinemax; advertisement
CHANGE, EDUCATION, KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING< WORK
OCCUPATION
We live in a world where what you earn depends on what you can learn, where the
average 18-year-old will change jobs eight times in a lifetime, and where none of us
can promise any of you that what you do
for a living is absolutely safe from now on.
Bill Clinton, 1992 2nd presidential debate
EXPERIENCE, LEARNING, HINDSIGHT, BOATS, LIGHT
To most men, experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the track
it has passed.
Samuel T. Coleridge, Table Talk and Omniana
DEMOCRACY, ERROR, FREEDOM, LEARNING, MISTAKES, TOLERANCE,
The story of men and nations is largely their attitude toward error. The less democratic a
society, the smaller the margin of error of its subjects and the greater the margin
of error of its rulers.
The more arbitrary the definition of error, the less important the machinery of justice.
The more protection error receives in high places, the less scope for public opinion
and an ungoverned press.
N. Cousins, Who Speaks For Man
TRAVEL, EXPERIENCE, LEARNING<
"How much a dunce that has been sent to roam Excels a dunce that has been kept at
home."
Cowper, The Progress of Error
WISDOM, HEART, MIND, FEELING, LEARNING
Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head, And learning, wiser grow without
books."
Cowper, The Task
CONDITIONING, ACTION, LEARNING, BIOFEEDBACK
...actions readily become associated with other actions and with various states of
mind...
Charles Darwin, Expression of The Emotions In Man And Animals
MEMORY, LEARNING
Half of his life the other half doth teach.
The future measuring by times gone by.
Foresight is to his mind but memory.
DeLille , Abbe
LEARNING
The world belongs to him who learns to study it.
Abbe' DeLille
In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate.
Descartes
We by our sufferings learn to prize our bliss.
Dryden, Astraea Redux
DISK STORAGE
Thus is better than real memory, because real memory, at the cost of much effort ,
learns to remember but not to forget..
Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
LEARNING
The wise man does not discriminate; he gathers together all the shreds of light,
from wherever they may come...
Eco, ibid.
RESEARCH, DISCOVERY, LEARNING
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Elliot
ACTION, MOVEMENT
The brain recalls just what the muscles grope for; no more, no less.
Faulkner, William Absolom, Absolom
KNOWLEDGE, RESEARCH, LEARNING
"Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess."
Goethe
LEARNING, KNOWLEDGE
"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.
I know no way of judging of the future but by the past."
Patrick Henry
INSIGHT, LEARNING, FEAR
"A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice."
E.W. Howe, Howe's Monthly
The man of imagination who is untrained (unlearned, uneducated, undisciplined) has wings
and no feet.
Joseph Joubert
To teach is to learn twice.
Joubert
BODY, CHANGE, PLEASURE< SURVIVAL
The body speaks the language of change and may learn to reorganize for pleasure and
survival.
Stanley Keleman, Somatic Reality
FREEDOM
Liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in
vain.
J.F. Kennedy, speech, 3/18/1963
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being,
always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
Walter Lippmann
"In learning, little should be proposed to the mind at once; and that being fully
mastered, proceed to the next adjoining part, yet unknown, simple, unperplexed
proposition."
LOCKE, JOHN
"On his impressions and thoughts must his happiness wholly depend.The impressions his
memory retains... because they have chastened his mind; for the souls we deal with here
will retain such impressions only as
have quickened their senses of goodness, as have made them a little more
noble."
Maeterlinck, Maurice, WISDOM and DESTINY
SKILL, HAPPINESS, SADNESS, JOY, LEARNING
"When man is born he opens his eyes to tears before he opens them to the sun."
Marini , Giovanni Battista d.1625
EXPERIENCE, KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING, OPPORTUNITY
"The days that make us happy make us wise."
Masefield, John
FREEDOM
In a free world, if we are to remain free, we must maintain, with our lives,
if need be, but surely by our lives, the opportunity for a man to learn anything.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, Journal of the Atomic Scientists, 1956
A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Pope, Essay on Criticism
The learned understand the reason of the art, the unlearned feel the pleasure.
Quintillian
RELIGION, TOLERANCE
It seems the more learned a man is the less consideration he has for another man's belief.
Will Rogers
COPING, LEARNING
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really
stop to look fear in the face."
Eleanor Roosevelt, YOU LEARN BY LIVING
HEART, PERSPECTIVE, FEELING, LOVE
We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have
taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the
heart.
Sir Walter Scott, Letter, 1825 (1771-1832)
LEARNING, KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, HAPPINESS
That man seems, on the whole, to be the most happy, who possessed of a large stock of
ideas, is in the constant habit of encreasing them, and whom every hour of his existence
renders more informed.
Samuel Harrison Smith, Remarks On Education, 1798
I lie here, by this water, to learn by root-of-heart a lesson which my master teaches me
to call Peace, or Contentment.
R.L. Stevenson, An Apology For Idlers
Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by
forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying.
Johannes Tauler 1300-1361 Theologian and Rosicrucian
IMPORTANT, PRIORITY, VALUE, MOMENT, DEATH, LIVING
"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..."
Thoreau, Walden
DISCOVERY, CREATIVITY, INSIGHT, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING,
INSPIRATION, IDEAS, LEARNING, INTUITION
Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
Thoreau, Life Without Principle
DRIVES, FEELINGS
One does not learn the pain of hunger or the pleasure of eating. Nor does one learn to be
afraid or to be joyous.
Sylvan S. Tomkins, Affect Imagery Conscoiusness, Volume 1 The Positive Affects
LEARNING, EPHEMERAL, TRANSIENCE
"The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense.
...Like a bird which alights nowhere, but hops perpetually from bough to bough, is the
power which abides in no man and no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one and
for another moment from that one."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
B. Franklin
PERCEPTION
"In order to learn to judge, one must begin by knowing."
Voltaire, Letter to Royal Prince of Prussia, Nov 22, 1738
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