Great Throughts Treasury

"The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another." - Marva Collins, born Marva Delores Nettles

"I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities." - Marva Collins, born Marva Delores Nettles

"AN INSPIRED LIFE: I HAVE A CHOICE. My key to living an inspired life involves Embracing my history, Understanding the function of expectations and gently learning to have none; Recognizing the power of attentive and conscious choices. In all circumstances I acknowledge this, IN ALL THINGS AND ALL WAYS, I HAVE CHOICE. My choice resides in my perspective. While I certainly do not control climate and markets and roadways and others, I do control myself and my response to all those circumstances. I do indeed." - Mary Anne Radmacher

"True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection." - Mary Baker Eddy

"In many ways, constancy is an illusion. After all, our ancestors were immigrants, many of them moving on every few years; today we are migrants in time. Unless teachers can hold up a model of lifelong learning and adaptation, graduates are likely to find themselves trapped into obsolescence as the world changes around them. Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain." - Mary Catherine Bateson

"Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps." - Mary Catherine Bateson

"Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another." - Mary Catherine Bateson

"When I speak of life and love as expanding with age, sex seems the least important thing. At any age we grow by the enlarging of consciousness, by learning a new language, or a new art or craft (gardening?) that implies a new way of looking at the universe. Love is one of the great enlargers of the person because it requires us to "take in" the stranger and to understand him, and to exercise restraint and tolerance as well as imagination to make the relationship work." - May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton

"Before he can know Who he is, man has to unlearn the mass of illusory knowledge hehas burdened himself with on the interminable journey from unconsciousness to consciousness. It is only through love that you can begin to unlearn, and, eventually, put an end to all that you do not know. God-love penetrates all illusion, while no amount of illusion can dim God-love. Start by learning to love God by beginning to love those whom you cannot. You will find that in serving others you are serving yourself. The more you remember others with kindness and generosity, the less you remember yourself; and when you completely forget yourself, you find me as the Source of all Love." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani

"Start learning to love God by loving those whom you cannot love. The more you remember others with kindness and generosity, the more you forget yourself, and when you completely forget yourself, you find God." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani

"The lesson I was learning involved the idea that I could feel compassion for people without acting on it." - Melodie Beattie

"Human-heartedness is man's mind. Righteousness is man's path. How sad that he abandons that path and does not rely on it; that he loses that mind and does not know to seek it. When a man has lost a cock or a dog, he knows to seek it, but having lost his (proper) mind, he does not know to seek it. The Way of Learning is nothing other than seeking the lost mind." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL

"The great end of learning is nothing else but to seek for the lost mind." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL

"Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"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." - Michel Foucault

"For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

"Even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály

"Through learning we grow, becoming more than we were before, and in that sense learning is unselfish, because it results in the transformation of what we were before, a setting aside of the old self in favor of a more complex one." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály

"All learning is ultimately self-learning." - Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

"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." - Monica Furlong

" A Religion is as much a progressive unlearning of false ideas concerning God as it is the learning of the true ideas concerning God. " - Mordecai Menaham Kaplan

"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." - Morris West, fully Morris Langlo West

"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live." - Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler

"Our intelligence depends upon the opportunity we take to experience and learn on our own. This self learning leads to full, dynamic living." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais

"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." - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart

"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." - Nancy Gibbs

"If you are not learning while you’re earning, you are cheating yourself out of the better portion of your compensation." - Napoleon Hill

"The finest fruit of serious learning should be the ability to speak the word God without reserve or embarrassment." - Nathan Marsh Pusey

"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."" - Neil Kurshan

"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." - Neil Postman

"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." - Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner

"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." - Nel Noddings

"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" - Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL

"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." - Nikolai Gogol, fully Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol or Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol

"Advertising is like learning -- a little is a dangerous thing." - P.T. Barnum, fully Phineas Taylor Barnum

"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. " - Paracelsus, aka 'Paracelsus the Great', born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim NULL

"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." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer." - Patti Smith, fully Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith

"Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night. " - Paul Gaugin, fully Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin

"Marriage, families, all relationships are more a process of learning the dance rather than finding the right dancer." - Paul Pearsall

"A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires… A teacher isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows… A disciple... can never imitate his guide's steps. You have your own way of living your life, of dealing with problems, and of winning. Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself. " - Paulo Coelho

"Man struggles to survive, not to succumb… Learning something means coming into contact with a world of which you know nothing. In order to learn, you must be humble… Many of us are returning from a long journey during which we were forced to search for things that were of no interest to us. Now we realize that they were false. But this return cannot be made without pain, because we have been away for a long time and feel that we are strangers in our own land. It will take some time to find the friends who also left, and the places where our roots and treasures lie. But this will happen… Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place… Miracles only happen if you believe in miracles." - Paulo Coelho

"The young all have the same dream: to save the world. Some quickly forget this dream, convinced that there are more important things to do, like having a family, earning money, traveling, and learning a foreign language. Others, though, decide that it really is possible to make a difference in society and to shape the world we will hand on to future generations… There is a work of art each of us was destined to create. That is the central point of our life, and -no matter how we try to deceive ourselves -we know how important it is to our happiness. Usually, that work of art is covered by years of fears, guilt and indecision. But, if we decide to remove those things that do not belong, if we have no doubt as to our capability, we are capable of going forward with the mission that is our destiny. That is the only way to live with honor. " - Paulo Coelho

"Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important. The reason it's important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them – in effect; they approach their life as an artist would approach a work of art. They do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning. Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. As such, it is an essential cornerstone of the learning organization – the learning organization’s spiritual foundation." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"It is not the absence of defensiveness that characterizes learning teams but the way defensiveness is faced." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works... images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models -- surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works -- promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we re-perceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning. " - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge