Quotes About Learning

If I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retentiveness.

Eduquer, c'est allumer un feu

We take other men's knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make them our own. We are just like a man who, needing fire, went to a neighbor's house to fetch it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without remembering to carry any back home. What good does it do us to have our belly full of meat if it is not digested, if it is not transformed into us, if it does not nourish and support us?

As conversation with men is wonderfully helpful, so is a visit to foreign lands...to whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them upon those of others.--Montaigne

Platon, Devlet'inde ak?lca ve ruhça zay?f olanlara tart??may? yasak etmiÅŸtir. DoÄŸru dürüst ad?m at?p yürümesini bilmeyen bir insanla gerçeÄŸi aramaya ç?kman?n anlam? var m??

La persecución y la caza corren propiamente de nuestra cuenta; no tenemos excusa si las efectuamos mal y fuera de propósito. Fallar en la captura es otra cosa. Porque hemos nacido para buscar la verdad; poseerla corresponde a una potencia mayor. [...] El mundo es sólo una escuela de indagación. Lo importante no es quien llegará a la meta, sino quién efectuará las más bellas carreras.

Sólo busco en los libros el gusto que me proporcione un honrado entretenimiento; o, si estudio, solo busco la ciencia que trate del conocimiento de mí mismo y que me instruya en un bien morir y un bien vivir

I, who make no other profession, find in myself such infinite depth and variety, that what I have learned bears no other fruit than to make me realize how much I still have to learn. To my weakness, so often perceived, I owe my inclination to coolness in my opinions and any hatred for that aggressiveness and quarrelsome arrogance that believes and trusts wholly in itself, a mortal enemy of discipline and truth.

Better to be tentative than to be recklessly sure- to be an apprentice at sixty, than to present oneself as a doctor at ten.

How do you strike fire without flint?" Connla wanted to know.  "The sun has no flints," Blathine replied. "Yet each day it brings fire to warm the earth."  Shaking his head ruefully, Connla said, "I see I will get no simple answers from you."  "There are no simple answers!" she chortled. "How quickly you are learning!

Kids can and will thrive in the right conditions, but it all seems to start with the teachers, and giving those teachers the resources to teach- and not just to test.

I would say the biggest one is probably not being afraid to fail. I think that's the greatest gift you could give to anybody.

As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.

Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should not be bothering with his book. But understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.

Books are absent teachers.

The path of true learning is strewn with rocks, not roses.

The dictionary also invites a playful reading. It challenges anyone to sit down with it in an idle moment. There are worse ways to kill time.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you

Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not. And books that are over your head weary you unless you can reach up to them and pull yourself up their level.

Finally, do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all; it is the essence of inspectional reading. Do not be afraid to be, or to seem to be, superficial. Race through even the hardest book. You will then be prepared to read it well the second time.

We are not told, or not told early enough so that it sinks in, that mathematics is a language, and that we can learn it like any other, including our own. We have to learn our own language twice, first when we learn to speak it, second when we learn to read it. Fortunately, mathematics has to be learned only once, since it is almost wholly a written language.

Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not worth reading. A better formula is this: Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.

Even when you have been somewhat enlightened by what you have read, you are called upon to continue the serach for significance.

All books will become light in proportion as you find light in them.