Skip to content

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.

Random quote on Learning

Most quoted on learning:

I don't feel special … I was just full of energy and loved to learn.

Alicia Witt

A company's success no longer depends primarily on its ability to raise investment capital. Success depends on the ability of its people to learn together and produce new ideas

Arie de Geus

Often he was a joy, and you know, he was one of the few people I ever learned anything from.

Werner Herzog Herzog on Herzog (2002)

When learning is in focus, arrangements are made in the environment of the learner that communicate the learning task, and learning resources are made available to learners so that they can explore and master learning tasks.

Béla H. Bánáthy Systems Design of Education (1991)

Three or four decades ago, society believed it efficient and fair to use one standard to evaluate all (high school) students. Since then, there has been a paradigm shift toward a pluralistic model of learning and university recruitment.

Hocheng Hong Hocheng Hong (2018)

As long as I live, so long do I learn. (1036)

Ramakrishna Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960)

Learning's always a painful process.

Luc Besson Lucy (2014)

The untrapped mind is open enough to see many possibilities, humble enough to learn from anyone and anything, forbearing enough to forgive all, perceptive enough to see things as they really are, and reasonable enough to judge their true value.

Matsushita Konosuke Kōnosuke Matsushita (1989)

Young cat! If you keep
Your eyes open enough,
Oh, the stuff you will learn!
The most wonderful stuff!

Dr. Seuss I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! (1978)

Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.

Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose (1980)

Thirdly, we will give two practical Courses of self-training, mental and physical, with which we can fit ourselves to become successful pioneers for the new age.

Vera Stanley Alder Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950)

I disbelieve in specialization and... experts. ...[P]aying too much respect to the specialist ...[is] destroying the commonwealth of learning, the rationalist tradition, and science ...

Karl Popper Realism and the Aim of Science (1983)

A constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game rather than a form of drudgery, for no activity can be continued for long if it does not to some extent afford pleasure to the participant.

Erasmus Letter to Christian Northoff (1497)

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Pete Seeger Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (1955)

As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claw.

Elizabeth Kostova The Historian (2005)

To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. To cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt.

Tom Robbins Wild Ducks Flying Backward (2005)

Pinker, Peter Marler... and myself... have frequently argued... [that] a significant part of a creature’s innate armamentarium consists... of [innate]... mechanisms... that enables learning.

Gary Marcus Innateness, AlphaZero, and Artificial Intelligence (2018)

The king, observing with judicious eyes
The state of both his universities,
To Oxford sent a troop of horse, and why?
That learned body wanted loyalty;
To Cambridge books, as very well discerning
How much that loyal body wanted learning.

Joseph Trapp Attributed

Related topics