Quotes About Learning

Years later, a Japanese visitor tried to apologize to Mao for his country's invasion of China. Mao interrupted, "Should I not thank you instead?" Without a worthy opponent, he explained, a man or group cannot grow stronger. Mao's

You see, you keep learning. People are always looking for a single magic turning point. There isn't one. It's much more of a gradual getting better and better and better and better.

If we keep practicing, we gain fluency; basic skills are mastered, allowing us to take on newer and more exciting challenges.

never spend so much time on your studies that you neglect your social skills.

Moving towards mastery will naturally bring you a more global outlook, but it is always wise to expedite the process by training yourself early on to continually enlarge your perspective.

We feel, perhaps unconsciously, that learning from Masters and submitting to their authority is somehow an indictment of our own natural ability, Even if we have teachers in our lives, we tend not to pay full attention to their advice, often preferring to do things our own way. In fact, we come to believe that being critical of Masters or teachers is somehow a sign of our intelligence, and that being a submissive pupil is a sign of weakness.

Even with skills that are primarily mental, such as computer programming or speaking a foreign language, it remains the case that we learn best through practice and repetition—the natural learning process.

Eventually, the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up with you, and the fall will be painful.

In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them—those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn.

Clearing your head of everything you thought you knew, even your most cherished ideas, will give you the mental space to be educated by your present experience--the best school of all. You will develop your own strategic muscles instead of depending on other people's theories and books.

Although time is the critical factor in attaining Mastery and this intuitive feel, the time we are talking about is not neutral or simply quantitative. An hour of Einstein's thinking at the age of sixteen does not equal an hour spent by an average high school student working on a problem in physics. It is not a matter of studying a subject for twenty years, and then emerging as a Master. The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.

Practical knowledge is the ultimate commodity, and is what will pay you dividends for decades to come—far more than the paltry increase in pay you might receive at some seemingly lucrative position that offers fewer learning opportunities

What separates Masters from others is often something surprisingly simple. Whenever we learn a skill, we frequently reach a point of frustration—what we are learning seems beyond our capabilities. Giving in to these feelings, we unconsciously quit on ourselves before we actually give up.

What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing.

Indeed, I have been a complete ass, and I know it.

What the Boy chiefly dabbled in was natural history and fairy tales, and he just took them as they came, in a sandwichy sort of way, without making any distinctions; and really his course of reading strikes one as rather sensible.

What I want you to do for me is this: I want to understand certain things and tell them to others. To do it, I have to get them right, so they are hard to resist. Stay with me until I can do this. Afterwards, you can go where you want.

You have probably heard the saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Actually, there is another saying that is probably more accurate, but is not quite as well known: 'The quickest way to become an old dog is to quit learning new tricks.

You cannot build a complete memory with a single memory tool any more than you can build a complete building with a single carpentry tool.

When a person asks how he can improve his memory, he cannot expect a useful answer until he makes his question more specific. What kind of material does he want to remember? In what way? [How will his memory be measured?] Under what circumstances? For how long? There are methods and principles in this book that apply to almost any kind of learning situation, but none applies to all situations

Anything, I eventually learned, is preferable to war; but that knowledge is something every man must learn for himself—usually at considerable expense.

If it's really education you want for Nathan,' Buell said, 'have him read the papers, so he'll know what's going on in the world, and why. Teach him to be interested in everything he doesn't understand - interested enough to find out about it from books or people that aren't afraid to tell the truth.

You can't simply highlight an inspiring paragraph in a book and walk away changed.

Change Tactic: Changing persistent and resistant habits always involves learning new skills.