Selected learning quotes

1. It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance.

2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

3. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

4. Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.

5. Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

6. If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

7. People who don't know anything tend to make up fake rules, the real rules being considerably more difficult to learn.

8. I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

9. It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical.

10. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

11. The best book on programming for the layman is 'Alice in Wonderland'; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

12. The important thing isn't the soundness or otherwise of the argument, but for it to make you think.

13. Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

14. Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

15. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

16. As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.

17. Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

18. The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

19. The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

20. You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

21. From naive simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.

22. There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.

23. I approach cooking from a science angle because I need to understand how things work. If I understand the egg, I can scramble it better. It's a simple as that.

24. I loved doing problems in school.

25. Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.

26. Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.

27. There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

28. Education is the best provision for old age.

29. Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

30. It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.

31. It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

32. The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

33. The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

34. The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.

35. When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time.

36. In order to keep an open mind, I am trying to avoid learning anything.

37. If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.

38. I always like to know what I'm doing, but there are times when nobody will tell me.

39. Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules.

40. It's easier to learn many other things, if you first learn how to learn.

41. Obviously, I need to send Thing to baking school.

42. Because I think the more you understand the world around you, I think the more power you can have in it. And the more you can do. And I think that's important.

43. I'm a hacker at heart and I like finding different ways of doing things because in doing so, I find new ways of examining the job at hand.

44. Life is always the best teacher, no matter what you're doing.

45. I am a nerd, I guess, if you think that getting kind of excited about understanding ionic bonds is nerdy. Truth is, I was a horrible student. I sucked at everything because nothing mattered to me. History was a bunch of numbers, chemistry was a bunch of symbols, math was bunch of equations. And once in my adulthood, I started getting really interested in food. All of those things started to make sense, and now I'm into it. I can't learn enough about chemistry because now it applies to something. And I blame the educational system for that -- for making it meaningless. For making a lot of what we learn in the educational system meaningless.

46. Repetition is the mother of skill. (might be someone else who wrote it).

47. Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd rather have been talking.

48. All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called 'guessing what was at the other side of the hill.'

49. I was educated once, and it took me years to get over it.

50. I was born with something that appealed to an audience at that particular time...I acted instinctively. I've had one of the greatest schools of all - a whole row of great, great directors.

51. Later the assistant chief surgeon told people that he had been a surgeon for eleven years, had seen not a few patients die and consequently had become quite cold and indifferent. He was interested only in diseases as such and had no feelings for his patients as people. But what Chiu Tsai-kang had said impressed him deeply. Even after he left the patient's room he thought it over for quite a long while. Here was a man awaiting death who had to clench his teeth to endure the searing pain of his whole body, but who constantly had the nation's steel production on his mind and who wholeheartedly desired to return to his furnace. In the past, he had read of people with such public spirit and unselfish character only in novels. He had regarded them as nothing but ideal, imaginary creations of literary writers. Now he has seen such a hero in the flesh with his own eyes.

52. I decided to pick out the greatest hitter to watch and study, and Jackson was good enough for me.

53. Pero el que no pudiere alcancar a tener la sabiduria en servidumbre, logrela en familiaridad.

54. Why you gotta act like you know, if you don't know? It's okay if you don't know everything.

55. Pray thee, take care, that tak'st my book in hand, To read it well: that is, to understand.

56. It would be lovely to think I had become a genius,' he smiles, 'but the fact is that I've forgotten most of it. Occasionally I can be watching University Challenge and a stray fact emerges from the recesses of my subconscious that I didn't know I knew, but for the most part I'm as vague on the details as I ever was.

57. You can lead people to truth, but you can't make them understand it: the story of my youth, as seen from the present.

58. Puisqu'on ne peut etre universel en sachant tout ce qui se peut savoir sur tout, il faut savoir peu de tout.

59. Mere technical knowledge is only the beginning of Kung Fu, to master it, one must enter into the spirit of it.

60. To me totality is very important in sparring. Many styles claim this totality. They say that they can cope with all types of attacks; that their structures cover all the possible lines and angles, and are capable of retaliation from all angles and lines. If this is true, then how did all the different styles come about? If they are in totality, why do some use only the straight lines, others the round lines, some only kicks, and why do still others who want to be different just flap and flick their hands? To me a system that clings to one small aspect of combat is actually in bondage.

61. When people talk about fighting schools they say that Kung Fu, or Karate, or this other style is the best. That is silly, and the problem becomes that the fighting style then becomes set in stone with no growth, and no adaptation, because what works well with me might not work for you.

62. When performing the movements, always use your imagination. Picture your adversary attacking, and use Jeet Kune-Do techniques in response to this imagined attack. As these techniques become more innate, new meaning will begin to emerge and better techniques can be formulated.

63. It's a little tough for the traditional martial artists to swallow [Jeet Kune Do], because one system doesn't do it. You've got to cross-train in many different systems. Actually, the father of mixed martial arts, if you will, was Bruce Lee. If you look at the way Bruce Lee trained, the way he fought, and many of the things he wrote, he said the perfect style was no style. You take a little something from everything. You take the good things from every different discipline, use what works, and you throw the rest away.

64. Young people may not be real worldly, but they're untroubled by the ballast of dead concepts and they think really fast. They've got plenty of time to develop 'critical/intellectual distance,' not that they much like doing it.

65. Curiosity: 'Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness.'

66. Reading: 'I have never read for entertainment, but rather for understanding and to satisfy my eager curiosity.'

67. Opinions: 'Try not to let your prejudices stand in the way of learning. What seems one way to one person seems very different to another. What would be correct and good in one instance can be wrong under other circumstances. Therefore, I consider the opinions of others as I do the words from a friend's conversation; to be considered alongside my own and carefully weighed and thought about.'

68. Learning: 'A person who makes few mistakes makes little progress.'

69. Intelligence: 'An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.'

70. Education: 'Education should prepare our minds to use its own powers of reason and conception rather than filling it with the accumulated misconceptions of the past.'

71. Knowledge: 'Knowledge is that possession that no misfortune can destroy, no authority can revoke, and no enemy can control. This makes knowledge the greatest of all freedoms.'

72. Education: 'One of the most important things one can do in life is to brutally question every single thing you are taught.'

73. Education: 'Our understanding of the world around us is constantly being redefined and expanded, and so therefore, it is wiser to be passionate about seeking for truth than knowing it.'

74. Education: 'The secret to discovery is to never believe existing facts.'

75. Education: 'True education is limited to those people who would die without knowing, whereas the masses in the institutions are merely going through the motions, for education is a way of living.'

76. Education: 'Those who have actually lived them, best teach the lessons of life. Everyone should have role models. It is wise to seek friendship with those people who have achieved your own aspirations, and to work hard to learn from them, and even harder to give to them. Who could tell you more about the world than someone who has lived in it, and who could tell you more about the times than those who have traversed them?'

77. Patience: 'The more a person knows the more they realize they don't know. To seek knowledge is healthy, but rather than making a personal investment in a proposition, make your investment in patience, time and tolerance. For nothing is more forbearing, charitable or fickle with knowledge than time.'

78. The main difficulty in using either lazo or bolas is to ride so well as to be able at full speed, and while suddenly turning about, to whirl them so steadily round the head, as to take aim: on foot any person would soon learn the art. One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush, and its revolving motion being thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and, like magic, caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured. Luckily he was an old practised animal, and knew what it meant; otherwise he would probably have kicked till he had thrown himself down. The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried out that they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself.

79. Dr. Grant took me occasionally to the meetings of the Wernerian Society, where various papers on natural history were read, discussed, and afterwards published in the 'Transactions.' I heard Audubon deliver there some interesting discourses on the habits of N. American birds, sneering somewhat unjustly at Waterton. By the way, a negro lived in Edinburgh, who had travelled with Waterton, and gained his livelihood by stuffing birds, which he did excellently: he gave me lessons for payment, and I used often to sit with him, for he was a very pleasant and intelligent man.

80. When I was maybe nine years old, I listened to the entire Beatles catalogue, non-stop, for about a year, being a naive child, I didn't know who sang what song. I didn't know it was a different guy. I didn't know it was Paul singing Helter Skelter. I didn't know it was John singing Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey.

81. I have really early memories of life, so don't freak out. As a child I'd get caught up in how words didn't make any sense. I remember hearing the song 'She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes,' trying to figure out what the fuck the guy was talking about.

82. The Beatles were my first love. My friend John Zimmer's oldest brother was kicked out of his house, and his parents put all of his stuff in the basement, where it was getting destroyed by flood waters. He had about fifteen Beatles records. So I stole the whole stack -- lovingly put paper towels between each of them. For over a year I listened to nothing but the Beatles. It was my music school.

83. Hell, that's why they make erasers.

84. I can't think of better ways to learn than through pleasure and curiosity. I guess the reason these two qualities play so small a role in formal education is that they are so subjective and individual. Curiosity and delight can't be institutionalized. Childhood and adolescence form our sensibilities. By the time I arrived in college, I had already developed a deep suspicion of all theories of art that did not originate in pleasure.

85. It was an object lesson to have served with him.

86. Still we say as we go,- 'Strange to think by the way Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day.'

87. The best way to learn Japanese is to be born as a Japanese baby, in Japan, raised by a Japanese family.

88. Interviewer: How did you learn to sing? Davey: I did? I don't know, I've been singing since I was five years old at family functions. I used to visit my great grandparents at their house in PA, and my relatives would pay me to sing old 1920's songs into a wooden spoon. I was between the ages of 3-5 years old.

89. 'Sometimes,' I said, 'it seems to me that a friend might not take such pleasure in making fun of me as you do.' 'Dear Odd! If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not, in fact, his friends. How else would one learn to avoid saying those things that would elicit laughter from strangers? The mockery of friends is affectionate, and inoculates against foolishness.'

90. Ad Graecas literas totum animum applicui; statimque, ut pecuniam accpero, Graecus primum autores, deinde vestes emam.

91. Indeed, 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.

92. Damn, and just when I was starting to get it!

93. You defeated me! But you won't defeat me again! Because you have grown all you can grow ... but I am still growing!

94. He was the perfect autodidact. He wanted to know it all.

95. The way to learn to earn a living is to go at it and earn a living.

96. I believe in the paradox of success through failure.

97. 'Along with the rest of 'Deep Purple', I once had the chance to meet Elvis. For a young singer like me, he was an absolute inspiration. I soaked up what he did like blotting paper. It's the same as being in school - you learn by copying the maestro. His personality was also extremely endearing, his interviews were very self-effacing (and), he came over as gentle and was generous in his praise of others. He had a natural, technical ability, but there was something in the humanity of his voice, and his delivery. Those early records at the Sun Records label are still incredible and the reason is simple: he was the greatest singer that ever lived.'

98. 'I taught him some lyrics in Spanish and he learned them. I wrote it for him the way it was sung (phonetically). He was very talented. It was very difficult Mexican music.'

99. Now it is certain. There is no magic stone. No secret to be found. One must go With the mind's winnowed learning.

100. Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.