Quotes About Learning

40 quotes

Aristotle described learning as a loop: the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. Benjamin Franklin was harsher about the alternative, saying experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that. Confucius found teachers everywhere, claiming that even in the company of two other men he could copy the good points of one and correct the bad points of the other in himself.

Some writers counted the cost. Cervantes listed what it takes to reach an eminent degree in learning: time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head and weakness in the stomach. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wished someone would teach the art of learning with difficulty. Abraham Lincoln warned that the philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next. Marcel Proust thought we have a great deal to learn from trees. Agatha Christie worried that children who have everything arranged for them at school seem forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.
English novelist and social critic

...and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.

— Our Mutual Friend

Russian novelist

What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning...

— Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

Irish playwright, critic, and polemicist

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.

— Major Barbara

English writer and philologist

A good vocabulary is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one's age group. It comes from reading books above one.

— The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Founding Father, U.S. president from 1801 to 1809

All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.

— The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 16: November 1789 to July 1790

English mystery and detective writer

I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.

— An Autobiography

French writer, historian and philosopher

had no need of a guide to learn ignorance

— Candide

Greek philosopher

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

— The Nicomachean Ethics

4th-century BCE Greek philosopher

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

— The Republic

British writer and physician

It was amusing to me to see how the detective's overbearing manner had changed suddenly to that of a child asking questions of its teacher.

— The Return of Sherlock Holmes

5th-century BCE Chinese philosopher and politician

Even when walking in the company of two other men, I am bound to be able to learn from them. The good points of the one I copy, the bad points of the other I correct in myself.

— The Analects of Confucius: Bilingual Edition, English and Chinese: 論語

American writer and literary critic

Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know all, were the curse of a fiend.

— The Complete Poetry

French philosopher, social theorist and activist

All those minds that are interested in finding out the truth communicate with each other across the distances of space and time. I, too, was taking part in the effort which humanity makes to know.

— Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

Ancient Greek playwright

A man, though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more, and must unbend his mind.

— Antigone

Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer

Among the many short cuts to science, we badly need someone to teach us the art of learning with difficulty.

— Emile or On Education

Roman poet (43 BC – 17/18 AD)

Right it is to be taught even by the enemy.

— Metamorphoses