Thoughts on Learning

Here are a few quotes from famous writers not only on how we learn, but also on how we teach. We had great fun one day sharing our understanding of these ideas, during our English Corner lesson at Web Suzhou. Here they are - food for thought in your own time. Get inspired!

Quotes for teachers

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself." - Chinese Proverb

Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds, do not overload them. Put there just a spark." - Anatole France

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." - Henry Brooks Adams

"A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary." - Thomas Carruthers

"Education costs money, but then so does ignorance." - Sir Claus Moser

"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." - Malcolm Forbes

"Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Give me a fish and I eat for a day.  Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime." - Chinese Proverb

"Good teachers are those who know how little they know. Bad teachers are those who think they know more than they don't know." - R. Verdi

"Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers." -  Josef Albers

"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." - Socrates

"If the child is not learning the way you are teaching, then you must teach in the way the child learns" - Rita Dunn

"I may have said the same thing before... but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different." - Oscar Wilde

"If what you're doing isn't working, try something else!" - NLP adage 

"I put the relation of a fine teacher to a student just below the relation of a mother to a son." - Thomas Wolfe

"It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it." - J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." - Albert Einstein

"Learning is finding out what you already know.  Doing is demonstrating that you know it.  Teaching is reminding others that they know it just as well as you.  You are all learners, doers, teachers" - Richard Bach

"Men learn while they teach." - Lucius A. Seneca

"No matter how good teaching may be, each student must take the responsibility for his own education." - John Carolus S. J.

"People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives." - Thomas Mann

"Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its values only to its scarcity." - Samuel Johnson

"Spoonfeeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon" - E. M. Forster

"Teachers should guide without dictating, and participate without dominating." - C.B. Neblette

"Teach your children by what you are, not just by what you say" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman

"The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn." - Cicero

"The basic idea behind teaching is to teach people what they need to know." - Carl Rogers

"The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

"The job of an educator is to teach students to see the vitality in themselves." - Joseph Campbell

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." - Plutarch

"There are no difficult students - just students who don't want to do it your way" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman

" The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind." - Kahlil Gibran

"To define is to destroy, to suggest is to create." - Stephane Mallarme

"To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching." - George Bernard Shaw

"To teach is to learn twice." - Joseph Joubert

"Try to present at least three options.  One is no choice at all.  Two creates a dilemma.  With three you begin to have real choice and flexibility" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman

"We think too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough about effective methods of learning." - John Carolus S. J.

"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child." - George Bernard Shaw

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." - John Cotton Dana

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself." - Galielo Galilei

"You can't direct the wind but you can adjust the sails." - Anonymous

Quotes for learners

"If you find yourself saying 'But I can't speak English...', try adding the word '...yet' - Jane Revell & Susan Norman

" Always do what you are afraid to do." - Ralph Waldo

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young." - Henry Ford

"A turtle makes progress when it sticks its neck out" - Anon

" Believe in yourself, be strong, never give up no matter what the circumstances are. You are a champion and will overcome the dreaded obstacles. Champions take failure as a learning opportunity, so take in all you can, and run with it. Be your best and don't ever ever give up." - Brad Gerrard

"Cherish your visions and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements" - Napoleon Hill

"Did you know that the Chinese symbol for 'crisis' includes a symbol which means 'opportunity'? - Jane Revell & Susan Norman

"Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world" - Samuel Butler (1835–1902)

"Every artist was at first an amateur." - Ralph W. Emerson

"I hear, and I forget.  I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand." - Chinese Proverb

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got" - NLP adage

"If what you're doing isn't working, try something else!" - NLP adage

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." - Derek Bok

"If you know what you want, you are more likely to get it" - NLP adage

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and made things happen." - Elinor Smith

"It's not just about looking and copying, it's about feeling too" - Paul Cezanne

"It's ok to try things out, to ask questions, to feel unsure, to let your mind wander, to daydream, to ask for help, to experiment, to take time out, not to know, to practise, to ask for help again - and again, to make mistakes, to check your understanding" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman

"Learning is never done without errors and defeat." - Vladimir Lenin

"Nothing we ever imagined is beyond our powers, only beyond our present self-knowledge" - Theodore Roszak

"One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he could not do." - Henry Ford

"One must have strategies to execute dreams." - Azim Premji, CEO Wipro Ind

"One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty, until you try." - Sophocles

"People learn more quickly by doing something or seeing something done." - Gilbert Highet
"Success comes in cans, failure in can'ts." -  Unknown

"The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle." - Pierre de Coubertin

"Too much credit is given to the end result. The true lesson is in the struggle that takes place between the dream and reality. That struggle is a thing called life!" - Garth Brooks 

"The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work." - Aristotle

" The only dreams impossible to reach are the ones you never pursue." - Michael Deckman

" There two types of people; the can do and the can't.  Which are you?" - George R. Cabrera

"Whenever you feel like saying 'Yes, but....`, try saying instead 'Yes, and....'" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman

"Whether you think you can, or think you can't...you're right!" - Henry Ford

"Worry is misuse of the imagination" - Mary Crowley

"You haven't failed, until you stop trying" - Unknown

"You've got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch onto the affirmative, don't mess with Mr In-between" - Popular song