from The TeachThought staff
The Internet loves many things.
It likes cats, for example. Memes too. It loves videos, which means it loves YouTube. He loves recipes and Wikipedia and alarming misdiagnoses on WebMd and, among other things (and we’re getting to the point here), quotes. This is partly due to the short nature of the quote, which suits the attention span of readers inundated with endless feeds of new content.
Quote length often fits many of the more popular formats across the internet, including Pinterest-friendly graphics, tweets, slideshows, and more.
So then, quotes about learning. Below we’ve selected 52 of our favorite quotes about learning. We tried to choose from a variety of thinkers, from teachers and writers to poets and farmers to philosophers and entrepreneurs to civil rights leaders and, in a few cases, even politicians.
Quotes About Learning: These quotes about learning necessarily reflect a certain view of learning, so this list is thus editorial. At TeachThought we focus on the human perspective/critical thinking/innovation and the quotes we’ve chosen mostly reflect that, just as we did in 50 of the best quotes about teaching.
We hope you find some of them useful – as writing prompts, for example. A discussion starter, perhaps. Or simply as a reminder to you as an educator of the nature and importance of your craft.
52 of the best quotes about learning
1. “The ability to speak accurately is closely related to the ability to know accurately.” —Wendell Berry
2. “Any fool can know. The point is to understand. – Albert Einstein
3. “Tell me and I’ll forget. Teach me and I remember. Get me involved and I’ll learn. – Benjamin Franklin
4. “What we already know often prevents us from learning.” – Claude Bernard
5. “Learning is the bringing together of seemingly disparate ideas and data.” – Terrell Hayek
6. “The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and learn again.” – Alvin Toffler
7. “All the world is a laboratory for the inquiring mind.” – Martin Fisher
8. “It’s what you learn after you know it all that matters.” – Harry S. Truman
9. “You learn nothing when you talk.” – Lyndon B. Johnson
10. “I have never learned from a person who agreed with me.” – Robert A. Heinlein
See also 52 of our favorite inspirational quotes for teachers
11. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. One learns by doing and by falling. – Richard Branson
12. “All our knowledge begins with the senses, then proceeds to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.’ – Immanuel Kant
13. “Education is lighting a flame, not filling a vessel.” – Socrates
14. “It’s not that I’m that smart. But I stay with the questions much longer. – Albert Einstein
15. “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is the noblest; Secondly, by imitation, which is easiest; and a third of experience, which is most bitter.’ – Confucius
16. “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” – Alexander Pope
17. Enlightenment is man’s departure from his self-inflicted immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-inflicted if it is not caused by a lack of intelligence, but by a lack of determination and courage to use one’s own intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! therefore is the motto of enlightenment. – Immanuel Kant
18. “The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.” – Voltaire
19. “Uncertainty is hard to bear, but so are most other virtues.” – Bertrand Russell
20. “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have reached our true work, and when we no longer know which way to take, we have reached our true journey. A mind that is not confused is not employed. It is the stopped flow that sings. – Wendell Berry
21. “What we persist in doing becomes easier for us; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
22. “Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything. – George Carlin
23. “A man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thought.” – Albert Einstein
24. “If you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you haven’t learned anything.” – Muhammad Ali
25. “Anyone who has begun to think puts a part of the world in danger.” – John Dewey
See also 50 of the best quotes about education
26. “A problem well posed is half solved.” – John Dewey
27. “The more you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you will go. – Dr. Seuss
28. “All learning has an emotional basis.” – Plato
29. Knowledge which is acquired by compulsion does not conquer the mind.’ -Plato
30. “Wisdom is learning what to ignore.” William James
31. “Every student can learn, but not on the same day or in the same way.” – George Evans
32. “Knowing is not enough; We have to apply. Desire is not enough; We have to do it. – Bruce Lee
33. “Have more than you show, Talk less than you know, Lend less than you owe, Ride more than you go, Learn more than you want, Ask less than you throw away.” – William Shakespeare
34. “To be ignorant is not so shameful as to be unwilling to learn.” – Benjamin Franklin
35. “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
36. “Collaboration allows us to know more than we are capable of knowing alone.” – Paul Solarz
37. “Soaring genius despises the beaten path.” Abraham Lincoln
38. “Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.” – Mark Twain
39. “Dialogue cannot exist without humility.” – Paulo Freire
40. Development is a series of rebirths.’ – Maria Montessori
41. “The mind of man, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
42. “It is not by ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.” – Wendell Berry
43. “Even genius asks questions.” – Tupac Shakur
44. “Expecting all children of the same age to learn from the same materials is like expecting all children of the same age to wear the same size clothes.” – Madeline Hunter
45. “What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create. – Buddha
46. ”Transfer is important, but think first of the learner and second of his native environment. Then, further on, let’s hope for self-initiated application of knowledge. No prompt. Unformatted. The spontaneous, personal and creative application of understanding in dynamic physical and digital environments. – Terry Hayek
47. “The human mind is our greatest resource.” – John F. Kennedy
48. “All the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in one major American city in one year. Not all bits have the same value.’ – Carl Sagan
49. “The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” – Buddha
50. “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking
51. “Ideas without action are not ideas. They are regrets. – Steve Jobs
52. “It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we come to our real business
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we began our real journey.
53. “A mind that is not confused is not used. It is the obstructed flow that sings.” – Wendell Berry
54. “There are four powers: memory and intellect, desire and greed. The first two are mental and the others sensual. The three senses of sight, hearing and smell cannot be prevented; touch and taste not at all. – Leonardo da Vinci
52 of the best quotes about learning
