This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"When a child takes his first steps alone, stumbles, and falls, we would never say he failed. Failing is a part of the learning process. Reframing the meaning of our own shortcomings and failures can be an important step in our personal growth." - Richard “Rick” Stone
"So much pleasure, and so little joy; so much learning, and so little wisdom… the one divine thing left to us is sadness… Without sadness where were brotherliness?" - Francis Thomson
"Life's not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain." - Vivian Greene
"Learning to accede to smaller demands so as not to have to grant larger ones is part of the art of leadership. The difficulty is that narrow concessions may also spread into wide ones." - Aaron Wildavsky
"Science is neither a philosophy nor a belief system. It is a combination of mental operations that has become increasingly the habit of educated peoples, a culture of illuminations hit upon by a fortunate turn of history that yielded the most effective way of learning about the real world ever conceived." -
"All learning involves trying something and seeing what happens. If one will not try anything until he is assured that he will not make a mistake in whatever he does, he will never be able to learn anything new at all." - David Bohm, fully David Joseph Bohm
"It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks." - Albert Einstein
"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education." - Albert Einstein
"Kindness has converted more sinners than zeal, eloquence or learning." - Frederick William Faber
"What is important is to keep learning, to enjoy challenge, and to tolerate ambiguity. In the end there are no certain answers." - Matina Horner, fully Matina Souretis Horner
"We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guild or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality." - Patroclus or Patroklos NULL
"In English, we have no single word that captures "love of learning." In Chinese, there is a single phrase "hao-xue-xin" which translates into English as "the heart and mind for wanting to learn" and nicely captures this strength of character." - Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman
"A little learning is a dangerous thing." - Alexander Pope
"Once you have learned how to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know." - Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work learning from failure." - Colin Powell, fully Colin Luther Powell
"Don't limit your child to your own learning, for he was born in another time." - Rabbinical Proverbs
"The Ten Commandments, and religious principles in general, simply tell you what to do. Learning to think morally (i.e., philosophically) helps you to discover both what to do, and why." - Peter B. Raabe
"Neither comprehension nor learning can take place in an atmosphere of anxiety." - Frank Smith
"We underrate our brains and our intelligence. Education has become such a complicated and overregulated activity that learning is regarded as something difficult that the brain would rather not do... But reluctance to learning cannot be attributed to the brain. Learning is one of the brain's primary functions, its constant concern, and we become restless and frustrated if there is no learning to be done. We are all capable of high and unsuspected learning accomplishments without effort." - Frank Smith
"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence." - Abigail Adams
"If our freedom means ease alone, if it means shirking the hard disciplines of learning, if it means evading the rigors and rewards of creative activity, if it means more expenditure on advertising than education, if it means in the schools the steady cult of the trivial and the mediocre, if it means - worst of all - indifference, or even contempt for all but athletic excellence, we may keep for a time the forms of free society, but its spirit will be dead." - Adlai Ewing Stevenson
"If our freedom means ease alone, if it means shirking the hard disciplines of learning, if it means evading the rigors and rewards of creative activity, if it means more expenditure on advertising than education, if it means in the schools the steady cult of the trivial and the mediocre, if it means - worst of all - indifference, or even contempt for all but athletic excellence, we may keep for a time the forms of free society, but its spirit will be dead." -
"If our freedom means ease alone, if it means shirking the hard disciplines of learning, if it means evading the rigors and rewards of creative activity, if it means more expenditure on advertising than education, if it means in the schools the steady cult of the trivial and the mediocre, if it means - worst of all - indifference, or even contempt for all but athletic excellence, we may keep for a time the forms of free society, but its spirit will be dead." -
"It is through suffering that learning comes." - Aeschylus NULL
"Dogmatism is the anti-Christ of learning." - Alfred North Whitehead
"Once learning is solidified, all is over with it." - Alfred North Whitehead
"We suppress the child’s curiosity (for example, there are questions one should not ask), and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic difficulties." - Alice Duer Miller
"A little appreciation seems to me even more insidious than a little learning. It taints everything it touches and it touches everything, just the veneer of appreciation." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, born Anne Spencer Morrow
"Thus with love. They err who think that they have but to learn about love, if they are to come by it. And that man hoodwinks himself who drifts through life hoping to be vanquished by love, learning by fitful fevers to enjoy brief stirrings of the heart, ever thinking to encounter that supreme fever which will enkindle his whole life; though, by reason of his pettiness of mind and the insignificance of the hill he has climbed, it can be but a short-lived exaltation of his heart. Thus, too, love is no sure resting place if it does not transform itself from day to day, like a child in the womb... For all that is neither ascent nor a transition lacks significance." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Wherever learning breeds specialists, the sum of human culture is enhanced thereby. That is the illusion and consolation of specialists." - Antonio Machado, fully Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz
"The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more." - Aristotle NULL
"Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." - Arthur Koestler
"Creative activity described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." - Arthur Koestler
"Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." - Arthur Koestler
"Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters and musicians." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Acceptance is recognizing that whatever happens, and however we respond, is precisely what we need for our highest good and learning." - Author Unknown NULL
"It is easier to understand a nation by listening to its music than by learning its language." - Author Unknown NULL
"Unless the effectiveness of our learning is greater than the nature of change is unlikely to be equated with progress." - Author Unknown NULL
"When our learning exceeds our deeds we are like trees whose branches are many but whose roots are few: the wind comes and uproots them... But when our deeds exceed our learning we are like trees whose branches are few but whose roots are many, so that even if all the winds of the world were to come and blow against them, they would be unable to move them." - Author Unknown NULL
"Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique." - Benjamin Jowett
"Learning to say a simple 'thank you' and not feel obligated to 'repay' gifts and kindnesses is a major part of the maturing process, my dear." - Blanche DeVries Bernard
"A real teacher can never run dry because he continually learns from each and every experience, not filled with likes and dislikes, bur desire through learning to evolute whatever he touches. A correct teacher of Yoga is not one who discusses it, but who is it." - Blanche DeVries Bernard
"It is better to have wisdom without learning, than to have learning without wisdom; just as it is better to be rich without being the possessor of a mine, than to be the possessor of a mine without being rich." - Charles Caleb Colton