Return
Home
The
Credits
The
Cast
Act
1
Act
2
Act
3
The
End
The
Reviews
Photos
     
 
LEARNING

.
.
.

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


Learning is not attained by chance. It must
be sought for with ardor and attended to
with diligence.
--Abigail Adams (1744—1818)
American first lady [1797—1801], the wife of John Adams, second
president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams,
the sixth president of the United States.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
--Douglas Adams (1952—2001)
British comic radio dramatist and author.

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.

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

-

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.
"Of Studies"


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]

-

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" [1790-1793?]

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 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 delievered 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]

-

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)


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]

-

-

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.

-

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.
--Benjamin Disraeli (1804—1881)
British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 1874—1880].

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.

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_ [1917], ch.13

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
--Will Durant (1885—1981)
American philosopher and writer.

^

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"

Whoso neglects learning in his youth,
Loses the past and is dead to the future.
--Euripides (485?—406 B.C.)
Greek dramatist.

Don't keep jingling in the course of your
conversation any intellectual money you
may have.
--Joseph Farrell

A closed mind is a dying mind.
--Edna Ferber (1887—1968)
American novelist and short-story writer.

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.
--Henry Ford (1863—1947)
American car manufacturer.

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]

-

"All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten"
by Robert Fulghum (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.

-

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

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't
learn something from him.
--Galileo Galilei (1564—1642)
Tuscan astronomer and physicist.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
-attributed to Mohandas K. Gandhi

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

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]

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]

No man is ever old enough to know better.
--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 jouranal), 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.

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"

-

There are no circumstances, however unfortunate,
that clever people don't extract some advantage
from.
--Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680)
French classical author.


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]

-

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]

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_ [1852], pt. 1

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.

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]

To have a thing is nothing,
If you've not the chance to show it,
And to know a thing is nothing,
Unless others know you know it.
--Attributed to both Lord Nancy & Lord Nares.

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].

The joy of the pedant who has
found out some useless fact.
--George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903—1950)
English novelist.
_Nineteen Eighty-Four_ [1949]

Books have led some to learning and others to madness.
--Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304—1374)
Italian scholar, poet, and Humanist.

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" [1711]. Part ii. Line 15

"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,
_Meditations on Freedom_

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

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_ [1905]_, vol. 1

You must not quote to me what I
once said. I am wiser now.
--Romy Schneider (1938—1982)
Austrian actress.

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

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.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other
men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what
others have labored hard for.
--Socrates (470?—399 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.

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.
--Herbert Spencer (1820—1903)
English philosopher.

What a man knows at 50 which he didn't know at
20 is,for the most part, incommunicable.
--Adlai E. Stevenson (1900—1965)
American Democratic politician.

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.
[Sister of Henry Ward Beecher, daughter of Lyman Beecher.]
Letter to her twin daughters.

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 (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.

-

-

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_ [1897] Ch. 11


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"

-

When people will not weed their own minds,
they are apt to be overrune with nettles.
--Horace Walpole (1717—1797)
English writer and connoisseur.

Examine all you have been told.
Dismiss what insults your soul.
--Walt Whitman (1819—1892)
American poet.

We should not only use the brains we
have, but all that we can borrow.
--Woodrow Wilson (1856—1924)
American Democratic statesman and President [1913—1921].

--

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.

fecund [FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd], adjective:
1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation;
fruitful; prolific.
2. Intellectually productive or inventive.
Ex.: For 21 years after the birth of the Prince of Wales, the
fecund royal couple produced children at the rate of two
every three years -- eight boys and six girls in all.
--Saul David,
_Prince of Pleasure_

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.
Ex.: Along with the rest of us he would certainly applaud
attempts to imbue the young with the spirit of fair play.
--John Bryant,
"Football should heed the Corinthian spirit,"
_Times_ (London), [17 February 2000]

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.
Ex.: "It is precisely for the philomaths that
universities ought to cater."
--Aldous Huxley, _Proper Studies_

polymath [PAH-lee-math], noun:
A person of great or varied learning; one acquainted with
various subjects of study.
Ex.: Alan Kay, for instance, one of the wizards of PARC
and now an Apple fellow, is a polymath accomplished in
math, biology, music, developmental psychology, philosophy,
and several other disciplines.
--Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman,
"Organizing Genius"

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


end page



| KARMA - KENTUCKY | KINDNESS | KILL - KU KLUX KLAN | KNOWLEDGE | LABELS - LAS VEGAS | LANGUAGE | LATIN - LAUGHTER | LAW (THE) - LAWYERS | LAZINESS - LEGACIES | LEARNING | LEISURE - LIBERALS | LIBERTY - LIES | LIFE | LIFESTYLE - LIMITATIONS | LINCOLN (ABRAHAM) - LITTERING | LIVE - LONDON | LONELINESS - LOUISIANA | LOVE - PAGE 1 (A-L) | LOVE - PAGE 2 (M-Z) | LOVE & MARRIAGE - LYNCHING |
| H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q |
| Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos |
 
     



Copyright © 2010, someworthwhilequotes.com. All rights reserved.