Quotes About Learning

This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read of every thing are thought to understand every thing too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.

We are born to be, if we please, rational creatures, but it is use and exercise only that makes us so, and we are indeed so no farther than industry and application has carried us.

It is only practice that improves our minds as well as bodies, and we must expect nothing from our understandings any farther than they are perfected by habits.

Let not men think there is no truth but in the sciences that they study, or the books that they read. To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to shew their darkness, but to put out our own eyes.

I think I may say, that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education

The business of Education, in respect of knowledge, is not, as I think, to perfect a learner in all or any one of the sciences; but to give his mind that disposition and those habits that may enable him to attain any part of knowledge he shall stand in need of in the future course of his life.

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

To speak less learnedly, and more intelligibly

You have a lot to learn, young man. Philosophy. Theology. Literature. Poetry. Drama. History. Archeology. Anthropology. Mythology. Music. These are your tools as much as brush and pigment. You cannot be an artist until you are civilized. You cannot be civilized until you learn. To be civilized is to know where you belong in the continuum of our art and your world. To surmount the past, you must know the past.

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.

A wise system of education will at last teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

The important is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.

There is no such thing as talent, there is only cleaning the mirror.

Far more seemly were it for thee to have thy study full of books, than thy purse full of money.

It is far more seemly to have thy Studie full of Bookes, than thy Purse full of money.

Is it not far better to abhor sins by the remembrance of others' faults, than by repentance of thine own follies?

The two most important questions in science are "What can I know?" and "How can I know it?

Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." He also believed that learning had purpose, stating, "The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

He advised, "Whenever you fall, pick up something.

All positive knowledge obtained . . . has resulted from the accurate observation of facts.

Getting the past wrong is almost as problematic as not getting the past into our minds at all.

To cut ourselves off from the past is to rob ourselves from understanding the present.

The wisest keeps something of the vision of a child. Though he may understand a thousand things that a child could not understand, he is always a beginner, close to the original meaning of life.

I'd like to work with kids in special education - younger kids.