Quotes About Learning

But I did feel, and passionately, that it wasn't fair of God to give us brains enough to ask the ultimate questions if he didn't intend to teach us the answers.

I like to understand things," Meg said. "We all do. But it isn't always possible.

But I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the reader ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.

As a child, when I came across a word I didn't know, I didn't stop reading the story to look it up, I just went on reading. And after I had come across the word in several books, I knew what it meant; it had been added to my vocabulary. This still happens.

We all tend to make zealous judgments and thereby close ourselves off from revelation. If we feel that we already know something in its totality, then we fail to keep our ears and eyes open to that which may expand or even changes that which we so zealously think we know.

Because of the very nature of the world as it is today, our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun, for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity.

The important thing is to recognize that our gift, no matter what the size, is indeed something given us, for which we can take no credit, but which we may humbly serve, and, in serving, learn more wholeness, be offered wondrous newness. Picasso says that an artist paints not to ask a question but because he has found something and he wants to share—he cannot help it—what he has found.

People like me spend years learning the techniques of meditation. But you're a poet, and poets are born knowing the language of angels.

If the book will be too difficult for grownups, then you write it for children.

An old ass knows more than a young colt

Sure, go ahead." Calvin fished in his pocket and pulled out a wad of folded paper. "As a matter of fact, I have some junk of mine to finish up. Math. That's one thing I have a hard time keeping up in. I'm okay on anything to do with words, but I don't do as well with numbers.

All teachers must face the fact that they are potential points of reference. The greatest challenge a teacher has to accept is the courage to be; if we are, we make mistakes; we say too much where we should have said nothing; we do not speak where a word might have made all the difference. If we are, we will make terrible errors. But we still have to have the courage to struggle on, trusting in our own points of reference to show us the way.

The greatest challenge a teacher has to accept is the courage to be; if we are, we make mistakes; we say too much where we should have said nothing; we do not speak where a word might have made all the difference. If we are, we will make terrible errors. But we still have to have the courage to struggle on, trusting in our own points of reference to show us the way.

Why is it, she wondered, that things that hurt people make them deeper and more understanding?

Plato also wrote—and I lettered this in firm italic letters and posted it on my dorm-room door—All learning which is acquired under compulsion has no hold upon the mind.

Qui plus sait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.

Oh, my darling you are not dumb, her father answered. You're like Charles Wallace. Your development has to go at its own pace. It just doesn't happen to be the usual pace.

People are afraid of knowledge that is not yet theirs.

I don't underestimate knowledge. But we get into trouble when we confuse it with truth.

Remember you have to go at his speed not your own...Adults take longer at this kind of thing then we do, particularly adults...who [haven't] tried new thoughts for a long time...but sometimes adults can go deeper then we can, if we're patient.

Un asno viejo sabe más que un potro. A. Perez. An old ass knows more than a young colt.

When I think of the children's books I love best, I realize that they're written on a great many different levels. Now the first level is story. A good children's book must hold the reader's interest. It must be first and foremost a good story that will make the reader keep wanting to go on turning the pages. But underneath that good story is buried treasure. No one person will find all of the treasure, but each will discover special joys.

Why is it that some grown-ups just seem to go on getting dumber and dumber year by year instead of learning anything?

I don't go along with the people who say they'd never want to live their childhoods again; I treasure every bit of mine, all the pains as well as the joy of discovery. But I also love being a grownup. To be half a century plus is wonderfully exciting, because I haven't lost any of my past, and am free to stand on the rock of all that the past has taught me as I look towards the future.