Quotes About Learning

Russians had a reputation for being the best programmers on Wall Street, and Serge thought he knew why: They had been forced to learn to program computers without the luxury of endless computer time. Many years later, when he had plenty of computer time, Serge still wrote out new programs on paper before typing them into the machine. "In Russia, time on the computer was measured in minutes," he said. "When you write a program, you are given a tiny time slot to make it work.

Someone once said that education was knowing what to do when you don't know

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him. —Leo Tolstoy, 1897

People often work hard to obtain information they already have

young man who set out to study the Talmud, not because he had the slightest interest in God but because he was curious about its internal contradictions.

The only thing history teaches us, a wise man once said, is that history doesn't teach us anything.

I also immediately internalized the idea that no school could teach someone how to be a great investor. If it were true, it'd be the most popular school in the world, with an impossibly high tuition. So it must not be true." Investing

I wonder," James wrote, "if we haven't become so numbed by all these numbers that we are no longer capable of truly assimilating any knowledge which might result from them.

Steve's fun to take to any Wall Street meeting," said Vinny. "Because he'll say 'explain that to me' thirty different times. Or 'could you explain that more, in English?' Because once you do that, there's a few things you learn. For a start, you figure out if they even know what they're talking about. And a lot of times they don't!

Because his memory is so selective, he has no scars from prior experience," said Vinny.

He found a book called Human Error, by a British psychologist aptly named James Reason.

She spent huge amounts of time with the public-health nurses, for instance, and treated them not as subordinates but as teachers. She insisted on seeing patients directly, which was truly odd.

No traditional Graham and Dodd investor invested in AOL," said a banker at the table. "They shorted it. And got fucked. They're learning the new model.

people don't learn what is imposed upon them but rather what they freely seek, out of desire or need. For people to learn, they need to want to learn.

why its Lessons Learned website was dumb. The gist of it was that people don't learn what is imposed upon them but rather what they freely seek, out of desire or need. For people to learn, they need to want to learn. "How many times have you traveled by air?" Carter began, in his report to his superiors.

Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.

He learned that there were more than one hundred thousand K–12 schools in the country, with fifty million children in them. Twenty-five million rode a bus to school. "I thought, Holy crap, half the kids in the U.S. hop on a school bus." There were seventy thousand buses in the entire U.S. public transportation system, but five hundred thousand school buses. On an average day, school buses carried twice as many people as the entire U.S. public transportation system.

people had the ability to hold in their short-term memory seven items, more or less.

There was, Carter thought, a downside to experience. "Experience is making the same mistake over and over again, only with greater confidence

For people to learn, they need to want to learn.

Clark's new enterprises: endure the humiliation of not fully understanding your job, and you might never need to work again.

You're going to make a mistake,' " said Carter. "The sin is making the same mistake twice. The best is to learn from other people's mistakes.

is the ceding of technical and scientific leadership to China. It is the innovation that never occurs, and the knowledge that is never created, because you have ceased to lay the groundwork for it. It is what you never learned that might have saved you.

I always felt a bit like a child in all this but having the eyes of a child and a sense of awe and no firmly held perspective to begin with was how I could help in some small way. I never had anything to unlearn.