Quotes about learning

Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

— Abigail Adams

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

— Mortimer J. Adler

It is always in season for old men to learn.

— Aeschylus

There is no more beautiful life than that of a student.

— F. Albrecht

A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

There is no time of life past learning something.

— St. Ambrose

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

— Francis Bacon

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.

— Francis Bacon

The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.

— Newton D. Baker

Don't just learn the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade.

— James Bennis

Take good hold of instruction and don't let her go, keep her for she is your life.

— Bible

Learning. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

— Ambrose Bierce

Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo clinic.

— Roy Jr. Blount

Be quick to learn and wise to know.

— George Burns

Learning how to learn is life's most important skill.

— Tony Buzan

The best results are achieved by using the right amount of effort in the right place at the right time. And this right amount is usually less than we think we need. In other words, the less unnecessary effort you put into learning, the more successful you'll be... the key to faster learning is to use appropriate effort. Greater effort can exacerbate faulty patterns of action. Doing the wrong thing with more intensity rarely improves the situation. Learning something new often requires us to unlearn something old.

— Tony Buzan

Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life.

— Robert Byrne

With just enough of learning to misquote.

— Lord Byron

Only those who have learned a lot are in a position to admit how little they know.

— L. Carte

How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.

— Johnny Cash

For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences.

— Miguel De Cervantes

Wear your learning like a watch and do not pull it out merely to show you have it. If you are asked for the time, tell it; but do not proclaim it hourly unasked.

— Lord Chesterfield

One should always think of what one is about: when one is learning, one should not think of play: and when one is at play, one should not think of one's learning.

— Lord Chesterfield

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 merely pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one.

— Lord Chesterfield

Personally, I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

— Winston Churchill

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

— Marcus T. Cicero

Learn as though you would never be able to master it; hold it as though you would be in fear of losing it.

— Confucius

If you would inform, a positive and dogmatic manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fixed in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.

— Frank Crane

It seems that we learn lessons when we least expect them but always when we need them the most, and, the true gift in these lessons always lies in the learning process itself.

— Cathy Lee Crosby

Never stop learning; knowledge doubles every fourteen months.

— Anthony J. D'Angelo

Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.

— Anthony J. D'Angelo

Learning is not compulsory but neither is survival.

— W. Edwards Deming

A university should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study. Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life.

— Henry L. Doherty

All other men are specialists, but his specialty is omniscience.

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

More can be learned from what works than from what fails.

— Rene Dubos

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.

— Bob Edwards

The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.

— Albert Einstein

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The years teach us much the days never knew.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption --pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.

— Desiderius Erasmus

I do pity unlearned people on a rainy day.

— Lucius C. Falkland

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

The things which hurt, instruct.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that won't be counseled can't be helped.

— Benjamin Franklin

Learn of the skillful; he that teaches himself, has a fool for his master.

— Benjamin Franklin

You can't learn less.

— Buckminster Fuller

You can never learn less, you can only learn more.

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.

— Thomas Fuller

Old foxes want no tutors.

— Thomas Fuller

Know most of the rooms of thy native country before thou goest over the threshold thereof.

— Thomas Fuller

We all learn best in our own ways. Some people do better studying one subject at a time, while some do better studying three things at once. Some people do best studying in structured, linear way, while others do best jumping around, surrounding a subject rather than traversing it. Some people prefer to learn by manipulating models, and others by reading.

— Bill Gates

Research shows that you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius.

— Michael J. Gelb

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved-to write a book.

— Edward Gibbon

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 end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Everywhere, we learn only from those whom we love.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

No one as ever completed their apprenticeship.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Whatsoever one would understand what he hears must hasten to put into practice what he has heard.

— St. Gregory The Great

Your ability to learn depends partly on your ability to relinquish what you've held.

— Milton Hall

This is an age of intellectual sauces, of essence, of distillation. We have conclusions without deductions, abridgments of history and abridgments of science without leading facts. We have animals for literature, Cabinet Encyclopaedias, Family Libraries, Diffusion Societies, and heaven knows what else! What is all this for? Not to add knowledge to the learned, but to tell points to the ignorant, without giving them the trouble to acquire the links. Oh! it is sad work. And the result will be injurious to all classes.

— Benjamin Haydon

Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.

— William Hazlitt

Learning isn't a means to an end; it is an end in itself.

— Robert Heinlein

There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.

— Ernest Hemingway

He who refuses to learn deserves extinction.

— Rabbi Hillel

Learning is a livelihood.

— Hitopadesa

That one is learned who has reduced his learning to practice.

— Hitopadesa

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

— Eric Hoffer

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

— Thomas H. Huxley

I loved learning, it was school I hated. I used to cut school to go learn something.

— Eric Jensen

You aren't learning anything when you're talking.

— Lyndon B. Johnson

Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal.

— Samuel Johnson

Everyone and everything around you is your teacher.

— Ken Keyes Jr.

Learn to pause... or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you.

— Doug King

I had six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew. Their names were: Where, What, When, Why, How and Who.

— Rudyard Kipling

Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.

— Karl Kraus

There is no need to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

Study is the scourge of boyhood, the environment of youth, the indulgence of adults and the curative for the aged.

— Saul Landau

Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

That's what learning is. You suddenly understand something you understood all your life, but in a new way.

— Doris Lessing

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Till a man can judge whether they be truths or not, his understanding is but little improved, and thus men of much reading, though greatly learned, but may be little knowing.

— John Locke

What you think about when you don't have to think, shows what you really are.

— David O. Mckay

I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

— Margaret Mead

When I learn something new-and it happens every day-I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest.

— Bill Moyers

In a world that is constantly changing, there is no one subject or set of subjects that will serve you for the foreseeable future, let alone for the rest of your life. The most important skill to acquire now is learning how to learn.

— John Naisbitt

Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.

— Novalis

I am defeated, and know it, if I meet any human being from whom I find myself unable to learn anything.

— George Herbert Palmer

The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one.

— M. Scott Peck

Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.

— Sydney Joseph Perelman

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

— Plato

All learning has an emotional base.

— Plato

We learn by teaching.

— Proverb

Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.

— Chinese Proverb

Learning makes a man fit company for himself as well as for others.

— English Proverb

Who God does not teach, man cannot.

— Gaelic Proverb