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LEARNING

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see: "KNOWLEDGE" for related links
see: "SUCCESS" for related links


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Human beings, who are almost unique in having
the ability to learn from the experience of
others, are also remarkable for their apparent
disinclination to do so.
--Douglas Adams (1952—2001)
British comic radio dramatist and author.
_Last Chance to See_ [1990]


You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
--Douglas Adams (1952—2001)
British comic radio dramatist and author.
_The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ [1996]

-

What one knows is, in youth, of little moment;
they know enough who know how to learn.
--Henry Brooks Adams (1838—1918)
American historian & man of letters.
_The Education of Henry Adams_, ch. 21 [1907]

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is
the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learned from
a friend, but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from
their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of
building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves
their children, their homes, and their properties.
--Aristophanes (c. 450—c. 388 BC)
Greek comic dramatist.
"Aves Graece", as quoted in Craufurd Tait Ramage
_Beautiful Thoughts from Greek Authors_, p. 45 [1864].

It is costly wisdom that is bought by experience.
--Roger Ascham (1515—1568)
English scholar, writer, and courtier.
_The Schoolmaster_ [1570]

I wish I'd known early what I had to learn late.
--Richie Ashburn (1927—1997)
American major-league baseball player.
Interview with Roger Angell in _New Yorker_ [1981].

-

"Better finish our chess-game," I said. "Your
move." I had forgotten my elegant trap, took me
as long to remember what it was as it took her to
consider her position and move.

She did not make the pawn advance that was essential
for her survival. I was sad and delighted. At least
she would see my marvelous satin trap spring shut.
That's what learning is, after all, I thought, not
whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how
we've changed because of it and what we take away
from it that we never had before, to apply to other
games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.

Even so, part of me stayed sad for her. My queen
moved and lifted her knight from the board, even
though the knight was guarded. Now her pawn would
take my queen, for the sacrifice. Go ahead and take
the queen, you little devil, enjoy it while you can.

Her pawn did not take my queen. Instead, after a
moment, her bishop flew from one corner of the
board to the other, her night-blue eyes watched
mine for response. "Checkmate," she whispered.
I turned to ash, unbelieving. Then studied what
she had done, reached for my notebook and
wrote half a page.

"What did you write?" "A nice new thought," I said.

"That's what learning is, after all: not whether we lose
the game, but how we lose and how we've changed
because of it and what we take away from it that we
never had before, to apply to other games. Losing,
in a curious way, is winning."

--Richard Bach (b. 1936)
American writer.
_The Bridge Across Forever_, ch. 15 [1984]

-

-

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in
doubts; but if he will content to begin with doubts,
he shall end in certainties.
--Francis Bacon (1561—1626)
English philosopher and essayist.
_The Advancement of Learning_ [1605]


The pleasure and delight of knowledge and
learning, it far surpasseth all other in nature.
--Francis Bacon (1561—1626)
English philosopher and essayist.
_The Advancement of Learning_ [1605]


Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe
and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse,
but to weigh and consider.
--Francis Bacon (1561—1626)
English philosopher and essayist.
_Essays_ [1625] "Of Studies"

-

Paul, thou art beside thyself; much
learning doth make thee mad.
--Bible
"Acts" 26:24

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
--William Blake (1757—1827)
English poet.
_The Marriage of Heaven and Earth_ [1790-93?] "Proverbs of Hell"

Try to know everything of something
and something of everything.
--attributed to Lord [Henry Peter] Brougham (1778—1868)
Scottish lawyer and politician.

If you would not have affliction visit you
twice, listen at once to what it teaches.
--James Burgh (1714—1775)
Scottish author.
_The Dignity of Human Nature_ [1754]

The elevation of the mind ought to be
the principal end of all our studies.
--Edmund Burke (1729—1797)
Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters.
_A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of
Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful_ [1756]

No matter how poor I am; no matter though the prosperous of
my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred
writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if
Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise; and
Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and
the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me
with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual
companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though
excluded from what is called the best society in the place
where I live.
--William Ellery Channing (1780—1842)
American Unitarian clergyman and author.
"Self Culture", address delivered in Boston [September 1838].

Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people
you are with. Wear your learning like your watch, in
a private pocket; and do not pull it out and strike it,
merely to show that you have one. If you are asked
what o'clock it is, tell it; but do not proclaim it hourly
and unasked, like the watchman.
--Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] (1694—1773)
British writer and politician.
"Letter to His Son" [22 February 1748]

The wise are instructed by reason, ordinary minds by
experience; the stupid by necessity; and brutes, by
instinct.
--Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 BC)
Roman orator and statesman.
Quoted in Charles Simmons _A Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker_, p. 273 [1852].

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The Chinese, whom it might be well to disparage less and imitate more,
seem almost the only people among whom learning and merit have the
ascendency, and wealth is not the standard of estimation.
--William Benton Clulow (1802—1882)
English clergyman.
_Aphorisms and Reflections_ [1843]

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The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when
he has the giant's shoulders to mount on.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834)
English poet, critic, and philosopher.
_The Friend_, vol. 2 "On The Principles of Political Knowledge" [1828]


If men could learn from history, what lessons it
might teach us! But passion and party blind our
eyes, and the light which experience gives is a
lantern on the stern, which shines only on the
waves behind us.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834)
English poet, critic, and philosopher.
_Table Talk_ [1835] (18 December 1831)

-

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Learning without thought is labor lost;
thought without learning is perilous.
--Confucius (551—479 B.C.)
K'ung Ch'iu, Chinese philosopher.
_The Confucian Analects_, bk. 2:15


If I am walking with two other men, each of them
will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good
points of the one and imitate them, and the bad
points of the other and correct them in myself.
--Confucius (551—479 B.C.)
K'ung Ch'iu, Chinese philosopher.
_The Sayings Of Confucius_ [John Murray, London, 1907]

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In order to improve the mind, we ought
less to learn, than to contemplate.
--Renι Descartes (1596—1650)
French philosopher and mathematician.
Attributed in Claude-Adrien Helvιtius
_De l'esprit; or, Essays on the Mind_ [1807 ed.].

You can stay young as long as you learn.
--attributed to Emily Dickinson (1830—1886)
American poet.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying
much, are the three pillars of learning.
--Isaac D'Israeli (1766—1848)
English author and the father of Benjamin Disraeli.
Attributed in S. P. Linn _Golden Gleams of Thought_ [1891].

The specialist learns more and more about less
and less until, finally, he knows everything about
nothing; whereas the generalist learns less and
less about more and more until, finally, he knows
nothing about everything.
--Donsen's Law,
in Paul Dickson, comp., _The Official Rules_, p. 65 [1978].

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of
our current proverbial sayings — they are so trite, so threadbare,
that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they
embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man
who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong.
How easy that seems! Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any
man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experiences
of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the
fire.
--Norman Douglas (1868—1952)
Austrian-born British novelist and essayist.
_South Wind_, ch. 13 [1917]

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
--Will [William James] Durant (1885—1981) & Ariel Durant (1898—1981)
_Story of Civilization: The Age of Faith_ [1950]

^

Albert Einstein (1879—1955)
German-born physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.

In the course of conversation at an American
dinner party Einstein's neighbor, a young girl,
asked the white-haired professor: 'What are
you actually by profession?' Einstein replied:
I devote myself to the study of physics.' The
girl looked at him in astonishment. 'You mean
to say you study physics at your age?' she
exclaimed. 'I finished mine a year ago.'

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.]

^

Some one said: 'The dead writers are remote from us because
we *know* so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they
are that which we know.
--T.S. Eliot (1888—1965)
Anglo-American poet, critic, and dramatist.
_The Sacred Wood_ [1920] "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

-

The things taught in schools and colleges are
not an education, but the means of an education.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
"Journal" [15 July 1851], as quoted in
_Memoirs of Hugh L. Keenleyside_ [1981].


Life is a succession of lessons which
must be lived to be understood.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
_The Conduct of Life_ [1860]


The years teach much which the days never knew.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
"Works and Days" in _Society and Solitude_ [1870]

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Whoso neglects learning in his youth,
Loses the past and is dead to the future.
--Euripides (485?—406 B.C.)
Greek dramatist.
Frag. 927 in John Bartlett _Familiar Quotations_ [1891].

Don't keep jingling in the course of your conversation
any intellectual money you happen to have.
--Joseph Farrell
_The Lectures of a Certain Professor_, VIII [1877]

A closed mind is a dying mind.
--Edna Ferber (1887—1968)
American novelist and short-story writer.
_Bravo_ [1949], with George S. Kaufman

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at
twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning
stays young. The greatest thing in life is to
keep your mind young.
--attributed to Henry Ford (1863—1947)
American car manufacturer.

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A learned blockhead is a greater
blockhead than an ignorant one.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.
_Poor Richard's Almanack_ [November 1734]


Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools learn in no other.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.
_Poor Richard's Almanack_ [December 1743]

-

-

"All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten"
by Robert Fulghum (b. 1937)
American author and essayist.

Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do,
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top
of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox. These are
the things I learned:

Share everything;
Play fair;
Don't hit people;
Put things back where you found them;
Clean up your own mess;
Don't take things that aren't yours;
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody;
Wash your hands before you eat;
Flush;
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you;
Live a balanced life- learn some, and think some,
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play,
and work every day some;
Take a nap every afternoon;
When you go out into the world, watch out for
traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.

-

One month in the school of affliction will teach thee more
than the great precepts of Aristotle in seven years; for thou
canst never judge rightly of human affairs, unless thou hast
first felt the blows, and found out the deceits of fortune.
--Thomas Fuller (1654—1734)
English writer and physician.
_Introductio ad Prudentiam_ [1731]


It is a silly fish that is caught twice with the same bait.
--Thomas Fuller (1654—1734)
English writer and physician.
_Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs_ [1732]

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I have never met a man so ignorant that
I couldn't learn something from him.
--Galileo Galilei (1564—1642)
Tuscan astronomer and physicist.
Attributed in Laurence J. Peter _Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time_ [1993 ed.].

Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil
O'er books consum'd the midnight oil?
--John Gay (1685—1732)
English poet and dramatist.
_Fables_, "The Shepard and the Philosopher", l. 15 [1727]

A happy life is one spent in learning, earning, and yearning.
--Lillian Gish (1896—1993)
American stage and movie actress.
In _Esquire_ [1969] as quoted in Larry Chang _Wisdom for the Soul:
Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing_, p. 354 [2006].

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832)
German poet, novelist, and playwright.
Attributed in Samuel Bent _Short Sayings of Great Men_ [1882].

-

I walked a mile with Pleasure,
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne'er a word said she;
But oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me!

--Robert Browning Hamilton
"Along the Road" in _The Century Magazine_ [February 1913].

-

-

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.
--William Hazlitt (1778—1830)
English essayist.
_Sketches and Essays_ [1829] "On the Conversation of Lords"


It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there
is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
--William Hazlitt (1778—1830)
English essayist.
"On the Conduct of Life" in _Literary Remains_ [1836].

-

What experience and history teach us is this — that peoples
and governments have never learned anything from history,
or acted on principles deduced from it.
--Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770—1831)
German philosopher.
_Philosophy of History_ [1832], v. 10 Introduction

Much learning does not teach one to have understanding.
--Heraclitus (c.535—475 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.
_Fragments_, XVI

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs
of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but
it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly
out of the superstitious fears which were implanted
in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason
may reject them.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809—1894)
American physician, poet, and essayist.
_The Poet at the Breakfast-Table_ [1872]

A failure is a man who has blundered, but
is not able to cash in on the experience.
--Elbert Hubbard (1859—1915)
American editor, publisher, and author who
died in the sinking of the "Lusitania."
_The Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams_ [1923]

That men do not learn very much from the lessons
of history is the most important of all the lessons
that history has to teach.
--Aldous Huxley (1894—1963)
English novelist (grandson of T.H. Huxley.)
_Collected Essays_ [1971]

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If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the
man who has so much as to be out of danger?
--T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley (1825—1895)
English biologist {grandfather of Aldous Huxley}.
_On Elemental Instruction in Physiology_ [1877]


Try to learn something about everything
and everything about something.
--T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley (1825—1895)
English biologist; grandfather of Aldous Huxley.
Text on his memorial.

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Learn as if you were to live forever;
live as if you were to die tomorrow.
--Ansalus de Insulis, as quoted in Samuel Smiles _Duty_ [1881].

No man is ever old enough to know better.
--attributed to Holbrook Jackson (1874—1948)
British journalist, writer, and publisher.

Nothing has more retarded the advancement
of learning than the disposition of vulgar
minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot
comprehend.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.
In "The Rambler" (English journal), 117 [30 April 1751].

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good
counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he
takes no other counsel than his own.— He that is taught only
by himself has a fool for a master.
--Ben Jonson (c.1573—1637)
English dramatist and poet.
Attributed in Tryon Edwards _A Dictionary of Thoughts_, p. 8 [1891 ed.].

Liberty without learning is always in peril and
learning without liberty is always in vain.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917—1963)
American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [1961—1963].
President of the U.S. [1961-1963],
In a speech celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of
the founding of Vanderbilt University [18 March 1963].

I keep six honest serving men,
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When,
And How and Where and Who.
--Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)
English writer and poet.
_The Just-So Stories_ [1902], "The Elephant's Child"

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There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest,
which makes us desire to know what may be useful to us;
another is from pride, and arises from a desire of knowing
what others are ignorant of.
--Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680)
French classical author.
_Maxims_ [1665]


There are no circumstances, however unfortunate,
that clever people don't extract some advantage
from.
--Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680)
French classical author.
In _Moral Reflections, Sentences and Maxims of Francis, Duc de
La Rochefoucauld_, p. 21 [William Gowans, New York, 1851].

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Fools learn nothing from wise men,
but wise men learn much from fools.
--Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741—1801)
Swiss writer, Protestant pastor, and founder of physiognomics.
Boston University School of Education
_American Education_ [September 1903 issue]
(This quote is also sometimes identified as a Dutch proverb.)

A book is a mirror: when a monkey
looks in, no apostle can look out.
--Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742—1799)
German scientist and drama critic.
_Aphorisms_ [1775—1779]

The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other
sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than
from his fervent supporters.
--Walter Lippmann (1889—1974)
American journalist.
"The Indispensable Opposition" in _Atlantic Monthly_ [1939]

The best academy, a mother's knee.
--James Russell Lowell (1819—1891)
American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat.
Quoted in Louis Albert Banks _The Christ Brotherhood_, ch. XVIII [1897].

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world historic
facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He
forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second
time as farce.
--Karl Marx (1818—1883)
German political philosopher.
_The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon_, pt. 1 [1852]

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's
statement that the elder Cato began at the age
of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer.
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth
shirked because they would take too long.
--W. Somerset Maugham (1874—1965)
English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer.
_The Summing Up_ [1938]

The pupil who is never required to do what he
cannot do, never does what he can do.
--attributed to John Stuart Mill (1806—1873)
English philosopher and social reformer.

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity
will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for
opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
--John Milton (1608—1674)
English poet.
_Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_ [1644]

There are three ingredients in the good
life: learning, earning and yearning.
--Christopher Morley (1890—1957)
American journalist, novelist, and poet.
_Parnassus on Wheels_ ch. 10 [1917]

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to
myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on
the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then
finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than
ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all
undiscovered before me.
--Sir Isaac Newton (1642—1727)
English mathematician and physicist.
Quoted in "Christian Monitor, and Religious Intelligencer" [4 July 1812].

A sort of intellectual warmth, the joy of the
pedant who has found out some useless fact,
shone through the dirt and scrubby hair.
--George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903—1950)
English novelist.
_Nineteen Eighty-Four_ [1949]

There is a principle which is a bar against all information,
which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail
to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle
is contempt prior to investigation.
--William Paley (1743—1805)
English theologian and philosopher.
Quoted in William Henry Poole
_Anglo-Israel; or, The British Nation The Lost Tribes of Israel_ [1879].

Books have led some to learning and others to madness.
--Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304—1374)
Italian scholar, poet, and Humanist.
Quoted in Charles Isaac Elton & Mary Augusta Elton
_The Great Book-Collectors_, p. 45 [1893].

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will
change and even reverse many of your present opinions.
Refrain therefore awhile from the setting yourself up as
a judge of the highest matters.
--Plato (427?—347 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.
_Laws_ # 888

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
--Alexander Pope (1688—1744)
English poet.
"An Essay on Criticism", part ii, l. 15 [1711]

The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth,
would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold
the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold
the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.
--Marcel Proust (1871—1922)
French novelist.
_Remembrance of Things Past_ [1913—1927]
Vol. V, _The Captive_ [1923], ch. II "The Verdurins Quarrel with M. de Charlus"

-

It is a good thing to learn caution by the misfortunes of others.
--Publilius Syrus (85—43 B.C.)
Latin writer of mimes who was originally a slave.
Quoted by Sir Richard Steele in "The Guardian", # 147 [29 August 1713].


From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.
--Publilius Syrus (85—43 B.C.)
Latin writer of mimes who was originally a slave.
Attributed in _A Dictionary of Select and Popular Quotations_,
[Pub.: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, Philadelphia, 6th ed., 1869.]

-

"The road," wrote Cervantes, "is always better than
the inn." Those who settle on fame or fortune as the
inn, and having arrived, call it quits, miss the whole
point of life. Realistically, there is no inn, no ultimate
point of arrival. It is the road now and forever—finite
man probing infinity, finding his way, endlessly. All
that matters are the lessons learned along the way.
--Leonard E. Read (1898—1983)
American economist.
_Meditations on Freedom_ [1972]

The mind is but a barren soil — a soil which is soon
exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one,
unless it be continually fertilized and enriched
with foreign matter.
--Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723—1792)
English painter.
_A Discourse Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy
on the distribution of the prizes, December 10, 1772_ [1775]

A Wise Old Owl lived in an oak;
The more he saw the less he spoke;
The less he spoke the more he heard:
Why can't we all be like that bird?
--Edward Hersey Richards (1874—1957)
Amercan poet.
"A Wise Old Owl"

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and
the other by association with smarter people.
--attributed to Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (1879—1935)
American humorist and actor.

They asked Lucman, the fabulist,
'From whom did you learn manners?'
He answered: 'From the unmannerly.'
--Sa'di [Muslih-uddin] (c. 1184—1291?)
Iranian poet.
_The Gulistan_ (Rose Garden) [1258]

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on
retentiveness; when experience is not retained, as
among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat
it. ... This is the condition of children and barbarians,
in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience.
--George Santayana (1863—1952)
Spanish-born philosopher and critic.
_The Life of Reason_, vol. 1 [1905]

-

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly
planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it
before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air
of great solemnity.
--Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860)
German philosopher.
_Studies in Pessimism_ [1851]


The scholars learn, not for the sake of knowledge
and insight, but to be able to chatter and give
themselves airs.
--Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860)
German philosopher.
"The Art of Literature: On Men of Learning" in
_Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer_, tr. T. Bailey Saunders [1889]

-

No man is the wiser for his learning;
wit and wisdom are born with a man.
--John Selden (1584—1654)
English historian.
_Table Talk_ [1689] "Learning"

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be
productive without culture, so the mind, without
cultivation, can never produce good fruit.
--Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.— 65 A.D.)
Roman philosopher and poet.
Quoted in Hugh Moore _A Dictionary of Quotations from
Various Authors in Ancient and Modern Languages_ [1831].

I trimmed my lamp, consumed the midnight oil.
--William Shenstone (1714—1763)
English poet.
_Elegies_, XI, st. 7

Employ your time in improving yourself by
other men's documents, so you shall come
easily by what others have labored hard for.
--Socrates (470?—399 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.
Attributed in _The Best Reading_ [G.P. Putnam, N.Y., 1872].

I long to put the experience of fifty years at once
into your young lives, to give you at once the key
to that treasure chamber every gem of which has
cost me tears and struggles and prayers, but you
must work for these inward treasures yourselves.
--Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811—1896)
American writer and philanthropist.
Letter to her twin daughters [1861].
Quoted in Karen Payne
_Between Ourselves: Letters Between Mothers and Daughters, 1750-1982_ [1983].


Every act of conscious learning requires the
willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-
esteem. That is why young children, before
they are aware of their own self-importance,
learn so easily; and why older persons,
especially if vain or important, cannot
learn at all.
--Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
American psychiatrist.
_The Second Sin_ [1973]

-

He who adds not to his learning diminishes it.
--Talmud (A.D.1st—6th cent.)
Rabbinical writings.


Don't limit a child to your own learning,
for he was born in another time.
--Talmud (A.D.1st—6th cent.)
Rabbinical writings.

-

-

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter
almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a
college education.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
_Pudd'nhead Wilson_ [1894], ch. 5 epigraph: "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"


We should be careful to get out of an experience only
the wisdom that is in it — and stop there; lest we be
like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will
never sit down on a hot stove-lid again — and that is
well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one
any more.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
_Following the Equator_, ch. 11 [1897]

-

When people will not weed their own minds,
they are apt to be overrun with nettles.
--Horace Walpole (1717—1797)
English writer and connoisseur.
Letter to Caroline, Countess of Ailesbury [10 July 1779].

It is not how much you know about life but how you live
your life that counts. Those who can avoid mistakes by
observing the mistakes of others are most apt to keep
free from sorrow. In a world full of uncertainties, the
record of what has gone before — human experience
— is as sure and reliable as anything of which we know.
--Ray Lyman Wilbur (1875—1949)
Medical doctor and president of Stanford University.
Quoted in Alfred Armand Montapert _Inspiration & Motivation_ [1982].

--

The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain,
involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The
hypothalamus controls the "Four F's":

1. fighting;
2. fleeing;
3. feeding;
4. mating.
--anonymous Psychology professor

-----

autodidact [aw-toh-DY-dakt], noun:
One who is self-taught.

catechumen (noun)
One who is being instructed in a subject at an elementary level.
Synonym: neophyte

edify [ED-uh-fy], transitive verb:
To instruct and improve, especially in moral
and religious knowledge; to teach.

erudite [AIR-yuh-dyt; -uh-dyt], adjective:
Characterized by extensive reading or knowledge; learned.

fecund [FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd], adjective:
1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation;
fruitful; prolific.
2. Intellectually productive or inventive.

imbue [im-BYOO], transitive verb:
1. To tinge or dye deeply; to cause to absorb thoroughly.
2. To instill profoundly; to cause to become impressed or penetrated.

opsimathy (noun) [ahp-'si-mκ-thi]
(Literary) Late learning, learning late in life.
A person who takes on learning late in life is
an "opsimath" ['ahp-si-mζth].

philomath [FIL-uh-math], noun:
A lover of learning; a scholar.

polymath [PAH-lee-math], noun:
A person of great or varied learning; one acquainted
with various subjects of study.

tyro [TY-roh], noun:
A beginner in learning; a novice.


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