Quotes

“We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.”

“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”

“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”

“I realise that it is not economical or common-sense to train a teacher and then put him in charge of such a large class that all he can do is prevent the children from breaking the furniture.”

“The real value of education to me lies in this: that it enables the individual to pierce the crust of things, to get beneath the surface, to see through the exterior to the reality what lies behind and beneath.”

“At a pinch you might do without Parliament. You could do without the Minister: you could certainly do without Civil Servants and almost as certainly without local education authorities. Without any or all of them the world might not seem much worse. But if there were no teachers the world would be back in barbarism within two generations.”

“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

“Knowledge only progresses by making mistakes as fast as possible.”

"We all know that the real reason universities have students is in order to educate the professors."

"One can only learn by teaching."

“In a classical joke a child stays behind after school to ask a personal question. "Teacher, what did I learn today? " The surprised teacher asks, "Why do you ask that?" and the child replies, "Daddy always asks me and I never know what to say".”

"The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge."

"You can't teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it."

"I anticipate megachange in the way children learn. When we look around us we see not only an absence of megachange, we see a number of ways in which policy seems to be designed to prevent the megachange."

"Now, given that picture of a rapid change of society, one would expect to see a rapid evolution of the institutions charged with preparing the young for it. We do not see this. We see a much slower rate of evolution of the school and that means we’re seeing a bigger and bigger gap between school and society. This gap is what I believe is responsible for the deterioration of performance in our schools and our educational systems. Because the children can see this; they can see that school is irrelevant. They feel that the pace of school and the mood of the school culture is out of sync with the society in which they live."

"…the bureaucratic administration has a deep, vested interest in maintaining the status quo. So very quickly we saw the computer converted from being the revolutionary instrument that the visionary teachers hoped to find in it and to become, instead, an instrument of reaction, a bulwark of conservatism."

"The decision to make is not whether we will continue with school or change it. It will collapse. Our question is whether we’ll wait until we’re driven to the wall and the system is collapsed from within from its own internal contradictions before we decide that we’re going to create conditions that will allow a new system where there’ll be diversity of learning paths, diversity of teaching methods, diversity of subjects to be learned."

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...”

“True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.”

“If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.”

“Then why do you want to know?"

"Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.”

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

"Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5000 years, the right to learn is undoubtly the most fundamental,"

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.”

“Education should provide the tools for a widening and deepening of life, for increased appreciation of all one sees or experiences. It should equip a person to live life well, to understand what is happening about him, for to live life well one must live with awareness.”

“Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.”

“We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.”

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”

“That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.”

"I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."

"Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty."

"Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach."

"The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge. Otherwise he – with his specialized knowledge – more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person"

"Once you stop learning, you start dying"

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education".

“I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.”

“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.”

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”

“You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.”

“A computer is like a violin. You can imagine a novice trying first a phonograph and then a violin. The latter, he says, sounds terrible. That is the argument we have heard from our humanists and most of our computer scientists. Computer programs are good, they say, for particular purposes, but they aren’t flexible. Neither is a violin, or a typewriter, until you learn how to use it.”

"Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do."

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

― Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history”

― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

“Learning never exhausts the mind.”

― Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

― Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

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

“Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.”

"We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them".

“The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.”

― Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC)

“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”

Vita sine litteris mors​ ​('Life without Learning is Death")

Docendo discimus ("by teaching, we learn")

Non scholae sin vitae discimus ("we do not learn for school, but for life")

"I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught"

― Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.”

“We destroy the love of learning in children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty and contemptible rewards, gold stars, or papers marked 100 and tacked to the wall, or A's on report cards, or honor rolls, or dean's lists, or Phi Beta Kappa keys, in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else.”

“To a very great degree, school is a place where children learn to be stupid.”

“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.”

“Fear, boredom, and resistance--they all go to make what we call stupid children.”

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

—Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

"Learners are encouraged to discover facts and relationships for themselves".

"Learning and thinking are always situated in a cultural setting and always dependent upon the utilization of cultural resources".

"Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves."

"Es hört doch jeder nur, was er versteht."

("Everyone hears only what he understands.")

"We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow."

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."

“The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of the mind for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.”

― Anatole France (1844-1924)

“How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it.”

― Louis Sullivan (1856-1924)

"To teach is to touch the heart and impel it to action."

— Louis Sullivan (1856-1924)

"Who is there that does not always desire to see, hear, or handle something new? To whom is it not a pleasure to go to some new place daily, to converse with someone, to narrate something, or have some fresh experience? In a word, the eyes, the ears, the sense of touch, the mind itself, are, in their search for food, ever carried beyond themselves; for to an active nature nothing is so intolerable as sloth."

"The saying "He who teaches others, teaches himself" is very true, not only because constant repetition impresses a fact indelibly on the mind, but because the process of teaching itself gives deeper insight into the subject taught."

"Much can be learned in play that will afterwards be of use when the circumstances demand it."

"For more than a hundred years much complaint has been made of the unmethodical way in which schools are conducted, but it is only within the last thirty that any serious attempt has been made to find a remedy for this state of things. And with what result? Schools remain exactly as they were."

"If, in each hour, a man could learn a single fragment of some branch of knowledge, a single rule of some mechanical art, a single pleasing story or proverb (the acquisition of which would require no effort), what a vast stock of learning he might lay by. Seneca is therefore right when he says: "Life is long, if we know how to use it." It is consequently of importance that we understand the art of making the very best use of our lives."

“I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.”

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”

“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

“Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.”

“Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.”

“The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.”

“Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.”

"Let us have as few people as possible between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The middlemen almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. It is because of teachers that so little is learned, and that so badly"

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

― Benjamin Franklin​ (1706-1790)​

"To learn is to broaden, to experience more, to snatch new aspects of life for yourself. To refuse to learn or to be relieved at not having to learn is to commit a form of suicide; in the long run, a more meaningful type of suicide than the mere ending of physical life.

Knowledge is not only power; it is happiness, and being taught is the intellectual analog of being loved."

"With mass education, it turned out that most people could be taught to read and write. In the same way, once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries, where you can ask any question and be given answers, you can look up something you’re interested in knowing, however silly it might seem to someone else".

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

― Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

“There is nothing in the understanding which has not come from the senses, except the understanding itself, or the one who understands.”

― Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)

“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.”

― Isaac Newton (1642-1726)

“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”

― Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason."

—Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

― Confucius (551BC-479BC)

“As is natural for an academic, when I want to learn about something, I volunteer to teach a course on the subject.”

― Steven Weinberg

"By art teaching I hasten to say that I do not mean giving children lessons in freehand drawing and perspective. I am simply calling attention to the fact that fine art is the only teacher except torture. I have already pointed out that nobody, except under threat of torture, can read a school book. The reason is that a school book is not a work of art. Similarly, you cannot listen to a lesson or a sermon unless the teacher or the preacher is an artist."

— George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)​

“Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better — best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it.”

"Argument is the soul of an education"

"Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods."

“Without a purpose, schools are houses of detention, not attention”

“The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.”

― H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"The paradox is that at the same time we've developed machines that behave more and more like humans, we've developed educational systems that push children to think like computers and behave like robots."

— Joichi Ito

“We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there.”

“When students cheat on exams it's because our school system values grades more than students value learning.”

“Our academic system rewards people who know a lot of stuff and generally we call those people smart, but at the end of the day who do you want- the person who can figure things out that they've never seen before or the person who can rattle off a bunch of facts?”

“Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults.”

― Neil deGrasse Tyson

“By the time a student gets to college, he's spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse resume to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he's ready--for nothing in particular.”

“We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective of individual talents and preferences.”

“Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them.”

“Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?”

“Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris.”

“College students can become extremely skilled at a few specialties, but many never learn what to do with those skills in the wider world.”

― Peter Thiel

“children who are praised for “being smart” often believe that every encounter is a test of whether they really are. So to avoid looking dumb, they resist new challenges and choose the easiest path. By contrast, kids who understand that effort and hard work lead to mastery and growth are more willing to take on new, difficult tasks.”

“we have three innate psychological needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy.”

― Daniel H. Pink

“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”

—Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)​

“[Lecturing is the] best way to get information from teacher’s notebook to student’s notebook without touching the student’s mind.”

― George Leonard (1923-2010)

“The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.”

“Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.”

“We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure all your life.”

"All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose."

“How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it”

“Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.”

“One's work may be finished someday, but one's education never.”

“The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.”

"Modern education is like being taken to the world's greatest restaurant & being forced to eat the menu."

— Murray Gell-Mann

"Learning entails forgetting.

The brain might be reluctant to let go of things it already knows how to do".

—Aaron Batista

Timeless Quotes for Teaching and Learning Inspiration

What Einstein, Twain, & Forty Eight Others Said About School

"The best education for the best is the best education for all."

"It must be remembered that the purpose of education is not to fill the minds of students with facts... it is to teach them to think."

"There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism."

"My view of university training is to unsettle the minds of young men, to widen their horizons, to inflame their intellects. It is not a hardening, or settling process. Education is not to teach men facts, theories, or laws; it is not to reform them, or amuse them, or to make them expert technicians in any field; it is to teach them to think, to think straight if possible; but to think always for themselves."

"Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible."

"My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects."

"Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories."

"Learning happens when someone wants to learn, not when someone wants to teach."

"Questions are the important thing, answers are less important. Learning to ask a good question is the heart of intelligence. Learning the answer-well, answers are for students. Questions are for thinkers."

"Everything they teach in school is oriented so that they can test it to show that you know it, instead of taking note of the obvious, which is that people learn by doing what people want to do."

"Education in a deepest sense has always been about doing rather than about knowing."

“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.”

— Agatha Christie (1890-1976)