This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Doris Lessing, fully Doris May Lessing, born Doris May Tayler
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all of your life, but in a new way.
Learning | Life | Life | Understand |
If we see the universe as not simply a bunch of dead matter and empty space but actually a living system, then our story may well be one of learning how to live together in a living universe. If we don't have a story to guide us into the future, we're going to pull back into our smaller life stories of the past--stories of nationalism, of ethnic groups, of tribal groups, of geographic groups--and instead of pulling together in cooperation we're going to pull apart in conflict. What I am suggesting is to step back and see the universe as our original, larger home. If we are going to pull together as a human family for a promising future, this is an inclusive project; no one is left out.
Cooperation | Family | Future | Learning | Life | Life | Past | Space | Story | System | Universe |
Whose neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.
The greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a tarrasse, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.
Curiosity | Desire | Error | Glory | Knowledge | Learning | Men | Mind | Rest | Wit |
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
Sanity was statistical; it was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.
The love of money and the love of learning rarely meet.
Learning | Love of learning | Love of money | Love | Money |
Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
For children, learning is never without emotional overtones. Whenever a teacher ignores the emotions and resorts to logical explanations, learning limps to a halt.
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
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.
Better | Control | Destroy | Enough | Knowledge | Learning | Wise | Learn |
Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
Corrective learning begins with the awakening of spirit, and the turning away from belief in physical sight.
Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it. Not ill your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone will you be on the right road to the Gate.
Learning | Means | Mind | Right | Truth | Will | Intellect |
The all-round liberally educated man, from Paleolithic times to the time when the earth shall become a cold cinder, will always be the same, namely, the man who follows his standards, of truth and beauty, who employs his learning and observation, his reason, his expression, for purposes of production, that is, to add something of his own to the stock of the world's ideas.
Education is the cultivation of the mind so that action is not self-centred; it is learning throughout life to break down the walls which the mind builds in order to be secure, and from which arises fear with all its complexities. To be rightly educated, you have to study hard and not be lazy. Be good at games, not to beat another, but to amuse yourself. Eat the right food, and keep physically fit. Let the mind be alert and capable of dealing with the problems of life, not as a Hindu, a Communist, or a Christian, but as a human being. To be rightly educated, you have to understand yourself; you have to keep on learning about yourself. When you stop learning, life becomes ugly and sorrowful. Without goodness and love, you are not rightly educated.
Action | Cultivation | Fear | Good | Learning | Life | Life | Mind | Order | Problems | Right | Study | Ugly | Understand |
It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they ''speak with the accent of natives'' they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds.
Art | Effort | Learning | People | Silence | Time | Art | Learn |
For the total development of the human being, solitude as a means of cultivating sensitivity becomes a necessity. One has to know what it means to be alone, what it is to meditate, what it is to die; and the implications of solitude, of meditation, of death, can be known only by seeking them out. These implications cannot be taught, they must be learnt. One can indicate, but learning by what is indicated is not the experiencing of solitude or meditation. To experience what is solitude and what is meditation, one must be in in a state of inquiry; only a mind that is in a state of inquiry is capable of learning. But when inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learnt without experiencing it.
Authority | Experience | Imitation | Inquiry | Learning | Means | Mind | Solitude |