This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Let us call the totality of the learning and skills that enable one to make the sign speak and to discover their meaning, hermeneutics; let us call the totality of the learning and skills that enable one to distinguish the location of the sign, to define what constitutes them as signs and to know how and by what laws they are linked, semiology: the sixteenth century superimposed hermeneutics and semiology in the form of similitude... 'Nature' is trapped in the thin layer that holds semiology and hermeneutics one above the other, it is neither mysterious nor veiled, it offers itself to our cognition, which it sometimes leads astray, only in so far as this superimposition necessarily includes a slight degree of non-coincidence between the resemblances.
Distinguish | Learning |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart
I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.
Death | God | Learning | Opportunity | God |
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.
Love must be a process of learning to be vulnerable – to one another, to ideas, to knowledge, to the arts, even to the injuries which the forces of evil constantly try to inflict. It is impossible to love without getting hurt, if only because the loveless may be incapable of responding to love. This is what is meant about taking up the cross and following Christ. Being a Christian means believing that love overcomes lovelessness, though at a cost.
Morris West, fully Morris Langlo West
The fact is that the learning process goes on, and so long as the voices are not stilled and the singers go on singing some of it gets through.
Learning |
Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
Our intelligence depends upon the opportunity we take to experience and learn on our own. This self learning leads to full, dynamic living.
Dynamic | Experience | Intelligence | Learning | Opportunity | Self | Learn |
Through play children explore, develop and represent learning experiences, which help them to make sense of the world. They practise and build up ideas, concepts and skills. They learn how to control themselves and understand the need for rules. They have opportunities to think creatively and imaginatively, take risks and make mistakes. They can work alone, alongside other children, or cooperate, communicating with them as they rehearse their feelings, investigate and solve problems. They can express fears or re-live anxious experiences in controlled and safe situations.
Children | Control | Learning | Need | Play | Safe | Sense | Work | Learn | Think | Understand |
If you are not learning while you’re earning, you are cheating yourself out of the better portion of your compensation.
Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
The inquiry method is motivated by Postman and Weingartner's recognition that good learners and sound reasoners center their attention and activity on the dynamic process of inquiry itself, not merely on the end product of static knowledge. They write that certain characteristics are common to all good learners saying that all good learners have: Self-confidence in their learning ability - Pleasure in problem solving - A keen sense of relevance - Reliance on their own judgment over other people's or society's - No fear of being wrong - No haste in answering - Flexibility in point of view - Respect for facts, and the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion - No need for final answers to all questions, and comfort in not knowing an answer to difficult questions rather than settling for a simplistic answer.
Ability | Attention | Comfort | Distinguish | Dynamic | Fear | Flexibility | Good | Haste | Inquiry | Judgment | Knowing | Learning | Method | Need | Opinion | Pleasure | Respect | Sense | Sound | Wrong | Flexibility | Respect |
It is easy to lose confidence in our natural ability to raise children. The true techniques for raising children are simple: Be with them, play with them, talk to them. You are not squandering their time no matter what the latest child development books say about "purposeful play" and "cognitive learning skills."
Ability | Books | Children | Confidence | Learning | Play | Time | Child |
The slogan, “All children can learn,” not only signals a high priority on equality (which I initially rejected in favor of excellence) but, perhaps inadvertently suggests one on learning. Busy explaining why we might give priority to excellence over equality, we may overlook this second difficulty. Is the aim of schooling learning and only learning? Is the proof of our success as educators found, then, in proof of learning? Again the temptation is to respond, “What do you mean by learning?” And then we are off on a discussion of levels and kinds of learning, methods of evaluation, alternative pedagogies, and — wondrous new idea — authentic assessment.
Children | Discussion | Equality | Excellence | Learning | Success | Temptation | Excellence | Temptation |
There must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories.
Individual | Learning | Perseverance | Think |
Nikolai Gogol, fully Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol or Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol
Mind you learn your lessons, Pavlusha, don't play the fool and don't get into scrapes, but spare no pain to please your teachers and superiors. So long as you please your superiors it does not matter if you are no good at learning and God has not endowed you with talent: you will still go far and outstrip the others. Do not keep company with your schoolfellows; they will teach you no good; but if you must, then choose those that are richer so that when the occasion arises they may be useful to you. Do not open your purse too freely to others, but rather conduct yourself in such a manner that others will open their freely to you, and, most important, husband your money and save every copeck: of all things in the world, money is the most dependable. A playmate or friend will lead you a merry dance and will be the first to betray you in times of trouble, but a copeck will never betray you, whatever trouble you might be in. With that copeck you can do everything and achieve everything in this world.
Conduct | Friend | God | Good | Husband | Learning | Money | Pain | Play | Teach | Will | Trouble | God | Learn |
Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL
Nothing could be more beneficial for even the most zealous searcher for knowledge than his being in fact most learned in that very ignorance which is peculiarly his own; and the better a man will have known his own ignorance, the greater his learning will be
P.T. Barnum, fully Phineas Taylor Barnum
Advertising is like learning -- a little is a dangerous thing.
I prefer the spagyric chemical physicians, for they do not consort with loafers or go about gorgeous in satins, silks and velvets, gold rings on their fingers, silver daggers hanging at their sides and white gloves on their hands, but they tend their work at the fire patiently day and night. They do not go promenading, but seek their recreation in the laboratory, wear plain learthern dress and aprons of hide upon which to wipe their hands, thrust their fingers amongst the coals, into dirt and rubbish and not into golden rings. They are sooty and dirty like the smiths and charcoal burners, and hence make little show, make not many words and gossip with their patients, do not highly praise their own remedies, for they well know that the work must praise the master, not the master praise his work. They well know that words and chatter do not help the sick nor cure them... Therefore they let such things alone and busy themselves with working with their fires and learning the steps of alchemy. These are distillation, solution, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, reverberation, sublimination, fixation, separation, reduction, coagulation, tinction, etc.
Day | Dirty | Gold | Learning | Little | Praise | Recreation | Words | Work | Gossip |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Man comes here [on Earth] for the sole purpose of learning to break the cords that bind his soul. Disease, failure, negation, greed, jealousy — break these bonds now. You are in a cocoon of your own bad habits, and you must be freed to spread its wings of beautiful divine qualities.