"Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves?" "Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too."
What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.--_Lamb._
A progeny of learning.
Whatever the skill of any country be in sciences, it is from excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.--_Goldsmith._
The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.
The day I stop giving is the day I stop receiving. The day I stop learning is the day I stop growing.
Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.
Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est=--To know where you can find a thing is the chief part of learning.
La docte antiquite est toujours venerable, / Je ne la trouve pas cependant adorable=--To the learning of antiquity I always pay due veneration, but I do not therefore adore it as sacred.
If a man could bequeath his virtues by will, and settle his sense and learning upon his heirs as certainly as he can his lands, a noble descent would then indeed be a valuable privilege.
You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear, that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. "What is this Truth you seek? What is this Beauty?" men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, "As others do, so will I. I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season." — then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history; and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. … Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in Nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom.
When we invoke the soul we move from the realm of information to the more vital realm of wisdom, the attainment of which is the only true value of learning. [ The Wall Street Journal , May 25, 1975.]
He who learns and makes no use of his learning is a beast of burden with a load of books.
Enflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.
It is perfectly clear that people, given no alternative, will choose tyranny over anarchy, because anarchy is the worst tyranny of all…. The special nature of liberties is that they can be defended only as long as we still have them. So the very first signs of their erosion must be resisted, whether the issue be domestic surveillance by the Army, so-called preventive detention, or the freedom of corporate television, or that of a campus newspaper…. It is an eternal error to believe that a cause considered righteous sanctifies unrighteous methods…. It is eternally true that both successful and unsuccessful revolutions increase the power of the state, not that of the individual…. We are learning that affluence without simplicity is a giant trap; that poverty itself is endurable, but not poverty side by side with affluence. Our political leaders are learning that Sophocles was right: nothing that is vast enters into the affairs of mortals without a curse, and that vast American power has now produced its curse…. What counts most in the long haul of adult life is not brilliance, or charisma, or derring-do, but rather the quality that the Romans called “gravitas” — patience, stamina, and weight of judgment…. The prime virtue is courage, because it makes all other virtues possible. [Highlights from the speech made by Eric Sevareid, CBS chief Washington correspondent, at the 80th Annual Stanford University Commencement, June 13, 1971.]
If thou love learning, thou shalt be learned.
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear (believe the aged friend), Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,-- How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
Gedult gaat boven geleerdheid=--Patience excels learning.
"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain."
You cannot open a book without learning something.
Much learning shows how little mortals know; much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy.
He that wants good sense is unhappy in having learning, for he has thereby only more ways of exposing himself; and he that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.
The young gentleman, according to Fates and Destinies and such odd sayings, the Sisters Three and such branches of learning, is indeed deceased; or, as you would say in plain terms, gone to heaven.
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again.
He who learns must suffer And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget Falls drop by drop upon the heart, And in our own despite, against our will, Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
Unix: Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once.
Faith can not be given to man. Faith arises in a man and increases in its action in him not as the result of automatic learning, that is, not from any automatic ascertainment of height, breadth, thickness, form and weight, or from the perception of anything by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste, but from understanding.
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
We do not want our world to perish. But in our quest for knowledge, century by century, we have placed all our trust in a cold, impartial intellect which only brings us nearer to destruction. We have heeded no wisdom offering guidance. Only by learning to love one another can our world be saved. Only love can conquer all.
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.
Men of great learning or genius are too full to be exact, and therefore choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.
All this is mere justice to Goethe; but, as it is the unpleasant duty of the historian to do justice upon, as well as to, great men, it behoves me to add that the germs of the worst faults of later ioeculative morphologists are no less visible in his writings than their great merits. In the artist-philosopher there was, at best, a good deal more artist than philosopher; and when Goethe ventured into the regions which belong to pure science, this excess of a virtue had all the consequences of a vice. "Trennen und zahlen lag nicht in meiner Natur," says he; but the mental operations of which "analysis and numeration" are partial expressions are indispensable for every step of progress beyond happy glimpses, even in morphology; while, in physiology and in physics, failure in the most exact performance of these operations involves sheer disaster, as indeed Goethe was afforded abundant opportunity of learning. Yet he never understood the sharp lessons he received, and put down to malice, or prejudice, the ill-reception of his unfortunate attempts to deal with purely physical problems.
Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.” —Benjamin Disraeli
Tam diu discendum est, quum diu nescias, et, si proverbio credimus, quam diu vivas=--You must continue learning as long as you do not know, and, if the proverb is to be believed, as long as you live.
In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University, the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; by so much greater and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man is greater than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality.
Dogmatic jargon, learn'd by heart, / Trite sentences, hard terms of art, / To vulgar ears seem so profound, / They fancy learning in the sound.
The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. What men need is, as much knowledge as they can assimilate and organise into a basis for action; give them more and it may become injurious. One knows people who are as heavy and stupid from undigested learning as others are from over-fulness of meat and drink.
A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.
That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
Enflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.
The Guide says there is an art to flying", said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
For 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 is a much greater misfortune.--_Plato._
Earnest souls who are attempting sanctification by struggle, instead of sanctification by faith, might be spared much humiliation by learning the botany of the Sermon on the Mount. Natural Law, Growth, p. 127.
There is nothing more perennial in us than habit and imitation. They are the source of all working and all apprenticeship, of all practice and all learning.
I am not … a "good man"! … And I'm not a bad man. … I am not a "hero" — and I'm definitely not a President — and no — I'm not an officer! … You know what I am? … I AM … an IDIOT! … with a box — and a screwdriver — passing through, helping out, learning. I don't need an army, I never have. …because love, it's not an emotion — Love is a promise!
Some people claim that the UNIX learning curve is steep, but at least you
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, published by the MIT Press, present findings from current research on how young people learn, play,
If a man should register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.--_Swift._
L'apparente facilite d'apprendre est cause de la perte des enfants=--The apparent facility of learning is a reason why children are lost.
No one can teach you anything worth learning but through manual labour; the very bread of life can only be got out of the chaff of it by rubbing it in your hands.
A seat of learning is a garden of heaven.
I intend no Monopoly but a Community in Learning: I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.
~Erudition.~--'Tis of great importance to the honor of learning that men of business should know erudition is not like a lark, which flies high, and delights in nothing but singing; but that 't is rather like a hawk, which soars aloft indeed, but can stoop when she finds it convenient, and seize her prey.--_Bacon._
Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance discontented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity
Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak.
Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books.
It is impossible to insist too strongly upon the fact that efficient teachers of science and of technology are not to be made by the processes in vogue at ordinary training colleges. The memory loaded with mere bookwork is not the thing wanted--is, in fact, rather worse than useless--in the teacher of scientific subjects. It is absolutely essential that his mind should be full of knowledge and not of mere learning, and that what he knows should have been learned in the laboratory rather than in the library.
Though a man may become learned by another's learning, he never can be wise but by his own wisdom.= (?)
Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace The day's disasters in his morning face; Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper circling round Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd. Yet was he kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declar'd how much he knew, 'T was certain he could write and cipher too.
Beauty is spoiled by an immoral nature; noble birth by bad conduct; learning, without being perfected; and wealth by not being properly utilised.
The sweetness of the lips increaseth learning.
Art has no function. It is not necessary. It has nothing to do with what anyone wants you to do or wants it to be, nothing but you and itself. The work generates itself and ideas and progress and learning come out of doing the work in a particular way. Creative art is a learning process for the artist and not a description of what is already known. An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work. The work needs concentration and one is often exhausted by it. It takes so much effort just to begin and although going on is mostly a pleasure it is also a great effort. The only thing for a creative artist to do is to do his chosen work. But really there is no choice. Nobody chooses. The only thing left for a creative artist to do is to do his chosen work in spite of everything and regardless of anything because when living draws to its end there are no excuses he can make to himself or to anyone else for not having done it. Either he did do it or he did not do it and very often he did not. Alas very often he did not.
Find time still to be learning somewhat good, and give up being desultory.
we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s much better to ask small questions than big ones. Here are a few reasons: 1. Small questions are by their nature less often asked and investigated, and maybe not at all. They are virgin territory for true learning. 2. Since big problems are usually a dense mass of intertwined small problems, you can make more progress by tackling a small piece of the big problem than by flailing away at grand solutions. 3. Any kind of change is hard, but the chances of triggering change on a small problem are much greater than on a big one. 4. Thinking big is, by definition, an exercise in imprecision or even speculation. When you think small, the stakes may be diminished but at least you can be relatively sure you know what you’re talking about.
In the world of letters, learning and knowledge are one, and books are the source of both; whereas in science, as in life, learning and knowledge are distinct, and the study of things, and not of books, is the source of the latter.
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.
Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind, / And to party gave up what was meant for mankind; / Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat / To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote.
Fide et literis=--By faith and learning.
Wearing all that weight Of learning lightly like a flower.
With just enough of learning to misquote.
Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire! / That's a' the learning I desire; / Then though I drudge through dub and mire, / At pleugh or cart, / My Muse, though hamely in attire, / May touch the heart.
No opinion is true simply because it has been held either by the greatest intellects or by the largest number of human beings at different periods in the history of the world. No one can spend years in the study of the religions of the world, beginning with the lowest and ending with the highest forms, no one can watch the sincerity of religious endeavour, the warmth of religious feeling, the nobleness of religious conduct, among races whom we are inclined to call pagan or savage, without learning at all events a lesson of humility. Anybody, be he Jew, Christian, Mohammedan, or Brahman, if he has a spark of modesty left, must feel that it would be nothing short of a miracle that his own religion alone should be perfect throughout, while that of every other believer should be false or wrong from beginning to end.
Man findet tausend Gelehrte, bis man auf einen weisen Mann stosst=--We may come upon a thousand men of learning before we stumble upon a single wise man.
That man is learned who reduceth his learning to practice.
The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centred life can be removed at once by learning Meekness and Lowliness of heart. He who learns them is forever proof against it. He lives henceforth a charmed life. Pax Vobiscum, p. 29.
He who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.
The man who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.
The first lesson of literature, no less than of life, is the learning how to burn one's own smoke.
In learning anything, its first principles alone should be taught by constraint.
States as great engines move slowly.
Consider that I laboured not for myself only, but for all them that seek learning.
The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.
Neither money pays, nor name pays, nor fame, nor learning; it is CHARACTER that cleave through adamantine walls of difference.
Your learning, like the lunar beam, affords light but not heat.
For the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.
The central task of education is to implant a will and a facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together. 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.
Homo multarum literarum=--A man of many letters, _i.e._, of extensive learning.
So while I still hate to readjust my thinking, still hate to give up old ways of perceiving and conceptualizing, yet at some deeper level I have, to a considerable degree, come to realize that these painful reorganizations are what is known as learning,
Truth is simple indeed, but we have generally no small trouble in learning to apply it to any practical purpose.
In America we see a country of which it has been truly said that in no other are there so few men of great learning and so few men of great ignorance.--_Buckle._
The child who is impelled to draw as soon as it can hold a pencil; the Mozart who breaks out into music as early; the boy Bidder who worked out the most complicated sums without learning arithmetic; the boy Pascal who evolved Euclid out of his own consciousness: all these may be said to have been impelled by instinct, as much as are the beaver and the bee. And the man of genius is distinct in kind from the man of cleverness, by reason of the working within him of strong innate tendencies--which cultivation may improve, but which it can no more create than horticulture can make thistles bear figs. The analogy between a musical instrument and the mind holds good here also. Art and industry may get much music, of a sort, out of a penny whistle; but, when all is done, it has no chance against an organ. The innate musical potentialities of the two are infinitely different.
But let me entreat you to remember my last words. Addressing myself to you, as teachers, I would say, mere book learning in physical science is a sham and a delusion--what you teach, unless you wish to be impostors, that you must first know; and real knowledge in science means personal acquaintance with the facts, be they few or many.
There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.
If you want learning, you must work for it.
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.
Without discretion learning is pedantry and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness. The best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.