Quotes About Learning

I'm teaching all the time. When am I to learn?

All the world says: yes we know what's written in the books but now let's see what our eyes tell us.

Knowledge is just a commodity. It is acquired in order to be resold. All those who have grown out of going to school have to do their learning virtually in secret, for anyone who admits the he has still something to learn devalues himself as a man whose knowledge is inadequate.

Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably. The Singer, in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, prologue (1944).

Sto lavorando duro per preparare il mio prossimo errore.

Un giorno, quando ne avremo il tempo penseremo i pensieri di tutti i pensatori di tutti i tempi guarderemo tutti i quadri di tutti i maestri rideremo con tutti i burloni faremo la corte a tutte le donne istruiremo tutti gli uomini

Scopo della scienza non è tanto quello di aprire una porta all'infinito sapere, quanto quello di porre una barriera all'infinita ignoranza.

Stupidity isn't invincible.

We crawl by inches. What we find today we will wipe from the blackboard tomorrow and reject it—unless it shows up again the day after tomorrow. And if we find anything which would suit us, that thing we will eye with particular distrust.

Una delle principali cause della miseria delle scienze sta, molto spesso, nella loro presunzione di essere ricche. Scopo della scienza non è tanto quello di aprire una porta all'infinito sapere, quanto quello di porre una barriera all'infinita ignoranza.

Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.

The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.

Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.

The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence.

This is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone, I learned it late.

The history of learning amounts to a history of specialization.

A catechism is a sort of strait-waistcoat put upon children, preventing all liberty of action; and while the child's brain ought to be cultured and developed, it ought never to be trained to run in one special groove of thought.

Education should teach children how to think, but should never tell them what to think. It should sharpen and polish the instruments of thought, but should not fix them into a machine made to cut out one special shape.

Life is such a gentle, treasured thing. I learn about it every minute. I think about it so deeply.

Already I was learning that some of the things I was learning weren't things I'd need to know.

With toddlers around, times are always interesting.