Quotes About Learning

Instead, I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.

I read science for the same reason I read theology: because I am a seeker after truth.

The real problem has far less to do with what is really out there than it does with our resistance to finding out what is really out there. The suffering comes from our reluctance to learn to walk in the dark.

Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails. Wise people do not have to be certain what they believe before they act. They are free to act, trusting that the practice itself will teach them what they need to know.

Reason can only work with the experience available to it. Wisdom atrophies if it is not walked on a regular basis.

being ordained is not about serving God perfectly but about serving God visibly, allowing other people to learn whatever they can from watching you rise and fall. "You probably won't be much worse than other people," he said, "and you certainly won't be any better, but you will have to let people look at you. You will have to let them see you as you are.

This is one of the reasons why I remain a devoted student of the Bible: because what it says is so often not what I have been taught it says, or what I think it says, or what I want it to say.

Greenspan calls this "spiritual bypassing"—using religion to dodge the dark emotions instead of letting it lead us to embrace those dark angels as the best, most demanding spiritual teachers we may ever know.

We each have our own way of expressing ourselves. I just think that life gives us things, situations— people— to make us see how much we have to learn . . . how much we need to remember to stay humble and realize we are just like children. We don't know everything.

It seemed a shame to have you losing a chance to use those good manners you learned from your grandmother.

I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting…. I will never talk down to, or draw down to, children.

I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting. …It does not hurt them to read about good and evil, love and hate, life and death. Nor do I think they should read only about things that they understand. '…a man's reach should exceed his grasp.' So should a child's. For myself, I will never talk down to, or draw down to, children. (from the author's acceptance speech for the Caldecott award)

The more attention you pay to the behavior you want from students, the more it will happen.

learned to keep my distance at an early age. A survival mechanism, you might say. I'm working on it, though. Another thirty years and I should about have it mastered.

Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that moment has to offer.

Maybe you picked up stuff from your mom without even knowing it.

Are you still teaching?

I understand Tom's got a good business going now." Sheila nodded. "Computers. He's taught me a lot about them. They're not really so bad. Oh, they don't pick up the dirty laundry or do boring case reports or—" she glanced down "—fix rum and Cokes, but they're pretty clever when it comes to things intellectual." She drawled the last for every syllable it was worth.

Experimental science is fascinating, but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it, and I'll read about it.

when something new sparks our interest an aperture forms in some outpost of the brain, gulps down an enzyme and sprouts a branch that can actually be measured. Imagine the orchards that are cultivated in our brains as we embrace new experiences and pursue with passion those interests that once attracted us but have been sadly mislaid along the way.

We'd make fewer mistakes if we didn't have to wait for time and distance to give us clarity.

If you're going to play the game properly you'd better know every rule.

I've seen how you can't learn anything when you're trying to look like the smartest person in the room.

The basic purpose of a liberal arts education is to liberate the human being to exercise his or her potential to the fullest.