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Learning Quotes

A short list with no flagged entries. Shakespeare, John Gay, Goldsmith, Pope and Bacon each have a few. Bacon’s Meditationes Sacræ (1597) is the best-known: reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. Samuel Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) urges the reader to pause a while from learning to be wise. Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary (1911) defines learning as the kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

For more on teaching and schools, see Education.

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Most quoted on learning:

The green retreats
Of Academus.

Mark Akenside

Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.

Francis Bacon

Human learning, with the blessing of God upon it, introduces us to divine wisdom; and while we study the works of nature the God of nature will manifest himself to us; since, to a well-tutored mind, “The heavens,” without a miracle, “declare his glory, and the firmament showeth his handy-work.”

George Horne

Then let every one of us, being warned by this sentence of the angel, acknowledge that he as yet cleaves to first principles, or, at least, does not comprehend all those things which are necessary to be known; and that therefore progress is to be made to the very end of life: for this is our wisdom, to be learners to the end.

John Calvin

O my God! What miseries and mockeries did I then experience when it was impressed on me that obedience to my teachers was proper to my boyhood estate if I was to flourish in this world and distinguish myself in those tricks of speech which would gain honor for me among men, and deceitful riches! To this end I was sent to school to get learning.

Augustine of Hippo

Children should above all be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves... Aim at creating free men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all respects, and above all things, unselfish.

Helena Blavatsky The Key to Theosophy (1889)

The learning of the gentleman enters through his ears, fastens to his heart, spreads through his four limbs, and manifests itself in his actions. ... The learning of the petty person enters through his ears and passes out his mouth. From mouth to ears is only four inches—how could it be enough to improve a whole body much larger than that?

Xunzi Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001)

I've studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine
And even, alas, Theology
From end to end with labor keen;
And here, poor fool; with all my lore
I stand no wiser than before.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In the old Ages, when Universities and Schools were first instituted, this function of the schoolmaster, to teach mere speaking, was the natural one. In those healthy times, guided by silent instincts and the monition of Nature, men had from of old been used to teach themselves what it was essential to learn, by the one sure method of learning anything, practical apprenticeship to it. This was the rule for all classes; as it now is the rule, unluckily, for only one class.

Thomas Carlyle

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

Kurt Vonnegut Cat's Cradle (1963)

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away.

Linus Pauling

Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

Lyndon B. Johnson

You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty.

Parmenides

The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind.

Mencius

Be grateful for the highs — and be grateful for the lows — 'cause it's in the lows where you learn.

Suzanne Somers

Obviously my best strategy is to wait, listen, and learn.

Jim Starlin

Love is something that never cared to learn how to judge anybody.

Sri Chinmoy Seventy Seven Thousand Service-Trees series 1-50 (1998)

I have always considered myself, when I learned what the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan.

Timothy Leary

The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.

Mortimer Adler The Leisure alternatives catalog: food for mind & body (1979)

Success in the marketplace increasingly depends on learning, yet most people don't know how to learn.

Chris Argyris

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