Last Updated on October 10, 2020
Find here a collection of 77 learning and education quotes that will inspire you to cultivate this keystone habit. What might sound like a verdict, holds for us big opportunities, let it be in the personal and/or professional development.
Especially in a post-factual era where emotions seem to be more important than mere evidence-based facts, a critical mind is crucial.
14 benefits of a lifelong learner
There are many reasons, why you should never stop expand your knowledge and education. As a keystone habit, it influences other habits in a positive way. Just to name a few:
- creates a curious, hungry mind
- helps fully develop natural abilities
- caters for entertainment
- provides happiness
- delivers satisfaction
- opens the mind
- promotes health
- success skill for the future
- helps us adapt to change
- helps us find meaning in our lives
- helps us establish valuable relationships and make new friends
- increases wisdom
- keeps us engaged as active contributors to society
- leads to an enriching life of self-fulfillment.
Part of those important benefits I’ve used as themes and expressed in picture quotes in my book. More about my gift book at the end of this blog post. First, let’s jump to the inspirational education quotes and learning sayings which I’ve grouped into different categories.
Inspiration
To be successful in no matter what area you have to believe in yourself. The higher your self-confidence the stronger the commitment to face even difficult tasks. Let’s start with my favorite quote or motto in this context: “She believed she could so she did.”
Steve Jobs
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.”
William Butler Yeats
“Education is the movement from darkness to light.”
Allan Bloom
“Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”
Bertrand Rusell
“We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us; and the more we gain, the more is our desire. The more we see, the more we are capable of seeing.”
Maria Mitchell
Get further inspired by your personal motto in life!
Curiosity
If you are curious about a field of knowledge, if you develop a personal relationship to the subject, everything becomes easier. This attitude can be cultivated artificially in the beginning – and over time it becomes more and more natural.
Smiley Blanton
“He who is afraid to ask is ashamed of learning.”
Danish Proverb
“The real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions.”
Bishop Creighton
“I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.”
Wilson Mizner
“If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.”
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr., speech at the University of Wisconsin, 1952
“The most important thing is a person. A person who incites your curiosity and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can.”
Steve Jobs
Thinking
Asking questions and finding answers is typical for thinking. It is best to start by looking for effective and correct questions. Because the quality of the answers is determined by the quality of the questions.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects
“To repeat what others have said requires education to challenge it, requires brains.”
Mary Pettibone Poole
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Mark Twain
“The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.”
Theodore Parker
Further reading: 68 inspirational reading quotes
Playing
Math and science are important for our kid’s education. But even old philosophers already knew the immense power of playing.
Plato
“Maturity consists in having rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.”
Josh Billings
“For a small child there is no division between playing and learning; between the things he or she does just for fun and things that are educational. The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play.”
Penelope Leach
Youth
Young people can be and want to be fully engaged learners. Do whatever you can to help them thrive!
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.”
Hebrew Proverb
“No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.”
Plato
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.
Thomas Szasz
Education
Education increasingly determines individual opportunities in life, the welfare of generations and the future of modern societies.
Aristotle
“Education is life itself.”
John Dewey
“Genius without education is like silver in the mine.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.”
Cicero
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.”
Plato, The Republic
“Education is like a double-edged sword. It may be turned to dangerous uses if it is not properly handled.”
Wu Ting-Fang
Growth
If we want to grow, we must increase the level of our dissatisfaction. We can do this by setting bigger goals than before.
From the gap between our current situation and the dream of a better life, there can follow a productive dissatisfaction.
This is the motor for the growth of our personality and for positive changes in our lives.
Kahlil Gibran
“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
Malcolm Stevenson Forbes
“If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation.”
Xenophon
“In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.”
Mark Zuckerberg
Values
Education helps to defend the important values of a society like e.g. liberty, dignity, equality, solidarity, laicism, justice, respect, equality between women and men, tolerance and the refusal of all forms of discrimination.
William Ralph Inge
“The highest result of education is tolerance.”
Hellen Keller
“There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.”
James Truslow Adams
“On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men.”
Ignazio Silone
Ignorance
In a post-factual world of “fake news” the price of ignorance can be high. We need time to understand what happens around us and to practice critical thinking. This is the only way to recognize fake news and prevent politicians from exploiting our ignorance and abusing their power.
Andy McIntyre
“It is only the ignorant who despise education.”
Publilius Syrus
“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”
Socrates
“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”
Will Durant
“Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.”
Sydney J. Harris
“True, a little learning is a dangerous thing, but it still beats total ignorance.”
Pauline Phillips
“There are so many things you can learn about, but you’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.”
Dr. Seuss
Further Reading: 45 procrastination quotes to support productivity
Setbacks
In this category, you find some typical lesson learned quotes.
Beth Brooke
“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
Aristotle
“Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.”
Carl Jung
“What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.”
Wendell Phillips
“When you win a lot, you don’t learn much. With my ups and downs, it’s a lot of learning.”
Tina Maze
“I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.”
Igor Stravinsky
Treasure
Education is a treasure and a lifelong companion. It offers important orientation in times of fake news and decreasing values.
Chinese proverb
“Learning makes a man fit company for himself.”
Thomas Fuller
“An investment in knowledge still yields the best returns.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
Nelson Mandela
“The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.”
B. B. King
Further Reading: 100 happy sayings to unlock the key to happiness
Practice
Anyone who practices or experiences something links the entire process with the actual information. He anchors the result more firmly in the brain as if he had only observed the same result in someone else.
Persian Proverb
“Experience is a good school, but the fees are high.”
Heinrich Heine
“One thing about the school of experience is that it will repeat the lesson if you flunk the first time.”
Author Unknown
“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lessons afterward.”
Vernon Law
“He that has acquired learning and nor practiced what he has learnt, is like a man who ploughs but sows no seed.”
Saadi, On the Duties of Society
Declutter
Glial cells are the “gardeners” of your brain. They eliminate obsolete, defective or redundant synapses. During sleep, the brain cells shrink by up to 60 percent, making room for the glial cells to work. When you wake up the next morning, the “weeds” are removed and you have enough space for new plants in your garden.
That’s why sleep is the most important recipe for faster and better education. Experts recommend seven to eight hours of sleep per night.
Lyndon B. Johnson
“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.”
Robert J. Sawyer
“The process of learning requires not only hearing and applying but also forgetting and then remembering again.”
John Gray
“More important than learning how to recall things is finding ways to forget things that are cluttering the mind.”
James Waddell Alexander
Wisdom
With increasing age, many people become more relaxed – and wiser, as a new study shows (1). Our ancestors knew this truth already many decades or centuries ago.
Albert Einstein
“Wisdom is the daughter of experience.”
Leonardo Da Vinci
“You can buy education, but wisdom is a gift from God.”
Author Unknown
“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”
Marilyn vos Savant
The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927)
“A wise system of education will, at last, teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.”
John Lubbock
A lifelong habit
These lifelong learning quotes will inspire you to never stop expand your knowledge.
Michelangelo
“The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life.”
Thomas Jefferson
“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.”
Aeschylus
“Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.”
Alfred Edward Perlman
“The education of a man is never completed until he dies.”
Robert E. Lee
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
Henry Ford
Motivational picture quote book
I’m happy to announce that I’ve also published an inspirational gift book a while ago. It explores “expanding your knowledge and education” in all its facets. It also reminds you that it is a keystone habit, unlocking otherwise hidden satisfactions and joys.
For readers of all ages
It is the 7th book in the Inspirational Picture Quotes series I’ve created and I’m grateful that I could publish it in August 2015, right before the “back-to-school” season… Don’t get me wrong, this book is not targeted exclusively to pupils but to readers of all ages.
You can see the front and back cover of my new book above. Some quotations from the book you’ve read and seen already above.
The right attitude is crucial
When I was creating the 52 clean eating habits challenge I researched over a hundred important habits. “become a lifelong learner” was one of them. I remember that I was a bit sad then, that this habit didn’t make it into the 52 Chef Habits Book, because other habits were just more closely related to the overall theme of health and weight loss.
With this picture quotes book, I can give this keystone habit the exposure it deserves.
Check out the short video to get a quick glimpse into the book
Awake the greatness within you and grab my inspirational quotes book is on Amazon. Click here and get the book!
There was never a better time for learners
It is true, that many things that we are interested in, we are learning automatically, without planning. But the older we get, the less often we are enthusiastic about something new to learn. Just think about the last software update in your company…
At the same time, there were never better conditions to expand your knowledge. The internet with all its wikis, forums, blogs and websites simplifies and democratizes the access to education for everyone. This was not possible in the old days. Education at the push of a bottom and the access to books has not always been taken for granted as it is today.
What to do if you don’t like to learn?
Then I highly recommend changing this “unhealthy” attitude. It is never too late. The scientist Christian Stamov Roßnagel found out in his research, that the quality of learning remains the same until the age 70. years. The advantage of the older is sharp intelligence, smart strategies, and experiences.
Create an exciting multi-dimensional life
An investment in your own education and a lifelong development of your personality is an effective preparation for good health even in old age. People living in a stimulating environment that encourages learning are less likely to get diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Get further inspired by my 101+ image quotes and cute motivational pictures.
With study and training, you can expand your awareness and truly create an exciting multi-dimensional life. It can’t get any better than that.
