118 Inspiring Quotes About Learning

In the ever-evolving journey of life, learning remains a constant and essential companion. Whether it’s acquiring new skills, gaining insights from past experiences, or drawing inspiration from the wisdom of others, the process of learning is integral to personal and professional growth. In this collection, we present 118 inspiring quotes that celebrate the transformative power of education and curiosity. These quotes, sourced from thinkers, leaders, and creatives across the globe, serve as reminders of the enduring value of knowledge and the endless possibilities that come with an open mind. Let these words inspire you to embrace learning as a lifelong adventure, sparking both motivation and a deeper appreciation for the world around you.

1. “The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

2. “Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” - Richard Feynmann

3. “He who laughs most, learns best” - John Cleese

4. “We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.” - Henry David Thoreau

5. “Those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!” - Claudius Galenus

6. “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.” - Geoffrey Chaucer

7. “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” - Eric Hoffer

8. “Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.” - Michel de Montaigne

9. “Ancora Imparo(Yet I am learning)” - Michelangelo

10. “There is creative reading as well as creative writing.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

11. “the fundamental purpose of school is learning, not teaching.” - Richard DuFour

12. “Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from on generation to the next. Books save lives.” - Laurie Anderson

13. “Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world's work, and the power to appreciate life.” - Brigham Young

14. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” - Socrates

15. “The worst thing a kid can say about homework is that it is too hard. The worst thing a kid can say about a game is it's too easy.” - Henry Jenkins

16. “I have no place in my life for someone who is sure he can do everything.” - Mercedes Lackey

17. “The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.” - Voltaire

18. “Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.” - E.M. Forster

19. “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” - Edmund Burke

20. “The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ...” - Bruno Bettelheim

21. “For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head.” - Benjamin Franklin

22. “The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation.” - Thomas A. Edison

23. “If you have no faith in yourself, then have faith in the things you call truth. You know what must be done. You may not have courage or trust or understanding or the will to do it, but you know what must be done. You can't turn back. There is now answer behind you. You fear what you cannot name. So look at it and find a name for it. Turn your face forward and learn. Do what must be done.-Deth to Morgon, Prince of Hed-” - Patricia A. McKillip

24. “A major challenge we face today, therefore, is to create a desire in people to learn; and to foster and facilitate this desire throughout their lives.” - Bryn Holmes

25. “All subjects are the same. I memorize notes for a test, spew it, ace it, then forget it. What makes this scary for the future of our country is that I'm in the tip-top percentile on every standardized test. I'm a model student with a very crappy attitude about learning.” - Megan McCafferty

26. “to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.” - Stephen R. Covey

27. “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” - Isaac Asimov

28. “Stress the right of the individual to select only what he desires to know, to use any knowledge as he wishes, that he himself owns what he has learned.” - L. Ron Hubbard

29. “In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words, we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point and concern ourselves only with the marvels of the formation of a language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices, we do not reach that end, for grammar is not literature… When we come to literature, we find that, though it conforms to the rules of grammar, it is yet a thing of joy; it is freedom itself. The beauty of a poem is bound by strict laws, yet it transcends them. The laws are its wings. They do not keep it weighed down. They carry it to freedom. Its form is in law, but its spirit is in beauty. Law is the first step toward freedom, and beauty is the complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty harmonizes in itself the limit and the beyond – the law and the liberty.” - Rabindranath Tagore

30. “True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create theirown.” - Nikos Kazantzakis

31. “Tu as tout à apprendre, tout ce qui ne s'apprend pas: la solitude, l'indifférence, la patience, le silence. Tu dois te déshabituer de tout: d'aller à la rencontre de ceux que si longtemps tu as côtoyés, de prendre tes repas, tes cafés à la place que chaque jour d'autres ont retenue pour toi, ont parfois défendue pour toi, de traîner dans la complicité fade des amitiés qui n'en finissent pas de se survivre, dans la rancoeur opportuniste et lâche des liaisons qui s'effilochent.” - Georges Perec

32. “Life lessons cannot be applied topically.” - Linda Robinson

33. “We are all butterflies. Earth is our chrysalis.” - LeeAnn Taylor

34. “Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of being challenged, and for the sake of being expressive, to offer something to someone else, to learn what we are capable of.” - Jason Mraz

35. “No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it” - Karl Popper

36. “The only things you learn are the things you tame” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

37. “A man who has ceased to learn ought not to wander around loose in these dangerous times” - M.M. Coady

38. “I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

39. “Suffering is a part of real life lesson.” - Toba Beta

40. “Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend.” - Samuel Johnson

41. “Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.” - George Iles

42. “Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.” - Maya Angelou

43. “Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning.” - George Bernard Shaw

44. “Thank goodness my education was neglected.” - Beatrix Potter

45. “Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.” - Ezra Pound

46. “The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.” - James Beattie

47. “The home is the chief school of human virtues.” - William Ellery Channing

48. “A stumble may prevent a fall.” - Thomas Fuller

49. “Learn from history or you're doomed to repeat it.” - Jesse Ventura

50. “No matter how righteous you are, no matter how carefully youcultivate the companionship of the Holy Ghost, there are vast amounts of knowledge which you need to acquireand which you are not going to receive through revelation.” - Rex E. Lee

51. “Cuando los zapatos aprietan, buena señal. Algo cambia ahí, algo que nos muestra, que sordamente nos pone, nos plantea. Por eso los monstruos son tan populares y los diarios se extasían con los terneros bicéfalos. ¡Qué oportunidades, qué esbozo de un gran salto hacia lo otro!” - Julio Cortazar

52. “I had discovered that learning something, no matter how complex, wasn't hard when I had a reason to want to know it.” - Homer Hickam

53. “It's much easier, after all, to learn mathematics from someone who's made a few mistakes. It's impossible to learn it from someone who always gets it right.” - John Lennox

54. “There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light-years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on new surprises” - Carl Sagan

55. “90% of learning comes through encouragement.” - Kevin Thoman

56. “There are many forms of love as there is moments in time, and you are capable of feeling them all at different stages of your life.” - Shannon Alder

57. “Why don't we want our children to learn to do mathematics? Is it that we don't trust them, that we think it's too hard? We seem to feel that they are capable of making arguments and coming to their own conclusions about Napoleon. Why not about triangles?” - Paul Lockhart

58. “The red firelight glowed on their two bonny heads and revealed their faces, animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he was twenty-three and she eighteen, each had so much of novelty to feel, and learn, that neither experienced nor evinced the sentiments of sober disenchanted maturity.” - Emily Brontë

59. “Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.” - Jeffrey Eugenides

60. “A different species a different set of values a world completely unlike your own. There is a feeling you can only get when you meet the unknown and open your mind. - Nakajima (Gin no Saji)” - Hiromu Arakawa

61. “There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.” - Ernest Hemingway

62. “Effective listening is more than simply avoiding the bad habit of interrupting others while they are speaking or finishing their sentences. It's being content to listen to the entire thought of someone rather than waiting impatiently for your chance to respond.” - Richard Carlson

63. “I think that there are those who write of life being a skip on the sidewalk, a chocolate bar, a bowl of cherries... the problem with that is it ends up disappointing people. Because life is more like being on the tube in London; you never really know what could happen! But then there are those people who bring a box of chocolates to eat on the tube...so life, it isn't a skip on the sidewalk, but it is a matter of strength: "Can I bring my bowl of cherries to feast on while I stand here in the gutter?" that's the essence of life. Can you still put on your rose-colored glasses while your eyes are filled with tears, and see everything in rosy colors? That's the strength that fuels a true life. Can you think to bring your little box of chocolates with you while you sit on the tube running under the streets of London? Because you should. Because even if you don't know anybody, and you don't know what's gonna happen next, you should have your box of chocolates with you. You should eat your bowl of cherries. And that is what life is.” - C. JoyBell C.

64. “For many years I have been asking myself why intelligent children act unintelligently at school. The simple answer is, "Because they're scared." I used to suspect that children's defeatism had something to do with their bad work in school, but I thought I could clear it away with hearty cries of "Onward! You can do it!" What I now see for the first time is the mechanism by which fear destroys intelligence, the way it affects a child's whole way of looking at, thinking about, and dealing with life. So we have two problems, not one: to stop children from being afraid, and then to break them of the bad thinking habits into which their fears have driven them.What is most surprising of all is how much fear there is in school. Why is so little said about it. Perhaps most people do not recognize fear in children when they see it. They can read the grossest signs of fear; they know what the trouble is when a child clings howling to his mother; but the subtler signs of fear escaping them. It is these signs, in children's faces, voices, and gestures, in their movements and ways of working, that tell me plainly that most children in school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared. Like good soldiers, they control their fears, live with them, and adjust themselves to them. But the trouble is, and here is a vital difference between school and war, that the adjustments children make to their fears are almost wholly bad, destructive of their intelligence and capacity. The scared fighter may be the best fighter, but the scared learner is always a poor learner.” - John Holt

65. “It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life.” - John Holt

66. “This life is for loving, sharing, learning, smiling, caring, forgiving, laughing, hugging, helping, dancing, wondering, healing, and even more loving. I choose to live life this way. I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, 'aw shit, he's up!” - Steve Maraboli

67. “... be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness...” - Ann Voskamp

68. “You will realize one day that all the money in the world cannot buy you happiness. Nor can it make you a person of good character. ” - Richelle E. Goodrich

69. “Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.” - Frank Herbert

70. “I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.” - Annie Dillard

71. “Will raised both eyebrows. 'Well, you learn a new thing everyday,' he said reflectively.'In your case, that's no exaggeration,' Halt said, completely straight-faced.” - John Flanagan

72. “I’ve only been to jail a few times, but in several different countries, at that. No, I've only been to jail a few times. But I still claim the ability to write a "serious" novel.” - Roman Payne

73. “I bargained with Life for a penny, and Life would pay no more, However I begged at eveningWhen I counted my scanty store;Life is a just employer. He gives you what you ask,But once you have set the wages,Why, you must bear the task.I worked for a menial's hire,Only to learn, dismayed,That any wage I had asked of Life,Life would have willingly paid” - Jessie B. Rittenhouse

74. “It is arguable that when Humanists, "Shook off," as people say, "the trammels of religion," and discovered things of this world as objects of veneration in their own right... they began to lose the finer appreciation of even the world itself. Thus to the Christian centuries, the flesh was holy (or sacer at least in one sense or the other), and they veiled its awful majesty; to the Humanist centuries it was divine in its own right, and they exhibited it. Now it is the commonplace of the magazine cover. It has lost its numen. So too with the cult of knowledge for its own sake declining from the Revival of Learning to the Brains Trust.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

75. “Warren Buffett is one of the best learning machines on this earth. The turtles which outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you.” - Lucas Remmerswaal

76. “Our parents can show us a lot of things: they can show us how we are to be and what things we ought to strive for, or they can show us how not to be and what things we ought to stray from, then you may have the kind of parents that show you all the things about you that you want to get rid of and you realize those traits aren't yours at all but are merely your parents' marks that have rubbed off onto you.” - C. JoyBell C.

77. “Everything I do is kind of a lesson, even if I am the only person who learns it.” - Taylor Mali

78. “My life changed the day I moved beyond just wishing for things and I started earning them. That is the day I learned that we don't get what we wish for, we get what we work for.” - Steve Maraboli

79. “The day we stop playing will be the day we stop learning.” - William Glasser

80. “A big secret to life is when you learn that learning is just as entertaining as entertainment, but with long term benefits.” - Orrin Woodward

81. “This was the book I read over and over. I really felt so in tune with them- I knew all the dates of their lives, what they had been doing, whre they had been. They were always my heroes, creating something fantastic against all odds, and against their real life.” - Christian Tetzlaff

82. “I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists.” - Nikos Kazantzakis

83. “Success, for most people, requires unlearning as much as learning.” - Orrin Woodward

84. “I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me.” - Judy Collins

85. “Education is a lifetime assignment & terminates when you do.” - Orrin Woodward

86. “I remember loving pencils. I was fond of paper. I loved the small of textbooks. I loved the way the light from a desk lamp was bright on a page. I loved the smell of fresh-cut grass. It was a thing everybody loved, but there was no shame in being that much like everybody else, in sharing that.” - Frederick Barthelme

87. “If there's nothing to learn because we know it all, what's the challenge? Why would the effort matter? What would be the point? - Odd Thomas” - Dean Koontz

88. “There are some things you can’t learn at any university, except for one, the University of Life... the only college where everyone is a permanent student.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

89. “No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.” - Robert McKee

90. “They say faith is taking the first step when you can’t see the whole staircase. Actually, wisdom is seeing the elevator behind it that would have taken you to the top floor.” - Shannon L. Alder

91. “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” - Pablo Picasso

92. “No matter how loud the sirens or how numerous the hazard signs, we all touch the flames at least once to prove they're hot.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

93. “Ich las damals unendlich viel und zwar gründlich. In wenigen Jahren schuf ich mir damit die Grundlagen eines Wissens, von denen ich auch heute noch zehre.” - Adolf Hitler

94. “We've been had.” - Rosen Topuzov

95. “I remembered learning from my favorite professor at Belmont to “surround yourself with people who are better than you,” and I was now living that mantra.” - Kimberly Novosel

96. “No truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end andlearn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.” - Haruki Murakami

97. “How had it come about that these particular designs were chosen as our letters? Who decreed what sound would accompany each shape? And how was it decided the manner they would come together to form a word? 'Why is this so?' I demanded to know.” - Theresa Breslin

98. “It's a good sign but rare instance when, in a relationship, you find that the more you learn about the other person, the more you continue to desire them. A sturdy bond delights in that degree of youthful intrigue. Love loves its youth.” - Criss Jami

99. “As you have seen the treachery of love because of me, I have seen my cruelty because of you. But you learned mercy from me, and from you I learned resilience. As you came to understand me enough to know the value I placed on selfless love, I understand your nature better.” - D. Morgenstern

100. “Knowledge is that possession that no misfortune can destroy, no authority can revoke, and no enemy can control. This makes knowledge the greatest of all freedoms.” - Bryant McGill

101. “It's much easier on the emotions when one sees life as an experiment rather than a struggle for popularity.” - Criss Jami

102. “The only teacher that's worth anything to you is your enemy.” - Orson Scott Card

103. “I have had to learn the simplest thingslast. Which made for difficulties.” - Charles Olsen

104. “I would go to parties and say I was an editor, and people, especially women – and that was important to me back then – would say, “Oh, really?” and raise their eyebrows and look at me a little more carefully. I remember the first party I went to after I became a teacher, someone asked me what I did for a living, and I said, “Well, I teach high school.” He looked over my shoulder, nodded his head, said, “I went to high school,” and walked away.Once I repeated this anecdote around a big table full of Mexican food in the garden at a place called La Choza in Chicago, and Becky Mueller, another teacher at the school, said that I was a “storyteller.” I liked that. I was looking for something to be other than “just” a teacher, and “storyteller” felt about right. I am a teacher and a storyteller in that order. I have made my living and my real contribution to my community as a teacher, and I have been very lucky to have found that calling, but all through the years I have entertained myself and occasionally other people by telling stories.” - Peter Ferry

105. “No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.” - Murasaki Shikibu

106. “The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated ideas, and you’re better off not touching it until you’re all grown up. I’m going to put it on this shelf and leave the room for a while. Don’t open it.” - Philip Pullman

107. “Writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You don't have to worry about learning things. The fire of one's art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it.” - James Lee Burke

108. “Looking back on my life, I sigh. The caprice of youth goes with the wind, I’ve no regrets.” - Roman Payne

109. “I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.” - Raymond Carver

110. “In what areas are you learning and growing? If the answer is none that means you're stagnating or regressing. Learn more, earn more, know more, grow more!” - Rob Liano

111. “They both have in common their conviction that they are still learning, still growing, when in fact they have long ago lost that ability.” - Ally Condie

112. “A mind with questions is a mind open to understanding.” - Colleen Houck

113. “After the woman left, Gran, staring out back at the Zebra Forest, said to me, 'I'm a liar, I'll admit. But I pride myself on being a really good liar. That's part of my educational philosophy, too, Annie B. Mark that down. Lesson one: If you're going to do something, make sure to do it with excellence.” - Adina Rishe Gewirtz

114. “That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

115. “There are possibilities that exist beyond our present "knowing," and to see those possibilities, we must abandon that which makes us feel safe.” - Bryant McGill

116. “If I went back to college again, I'd concentrate on two areas learning to write and to speak before an audience. Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively.” - Gerald R. Ford

117. “Successful continual learning means maintaining a balance and variety of success-oriented attributes, the most prominent being awareness, confidence, persistence, determination, courage, and focus. But curiosity, ingenuity, and creativity may be even more important as it is these traits that fuel the desire to continue to question and challenge the status quo.” - Lorii Myers

118. “Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.” - Idries Shah