Quotations on Learning, Creativity, Work & Life

Do not believe a thing because many repeat it.
Do not accept a thing on the authority of the sages of old,
nor on the ground that a statement is found in the scriptures.
Never believe anything because probability is in its favor.
Do not believe in that which you have yourselves imagined, thinking that a god has inspired it.
Believe nothing merely on the authority of your teachers or of the priests.
After examination, believe that which you have tested for yourselves and found reasonable,
which is in conformity with your well-being and that of others.
--- The Buddha

He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Avoid him.
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is simple. Teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him.
But he who knows, and knows that he knows, is a wise man. Follow him.
--- Arab saying

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
--- John Wesley

He acts before he speaks, and afterward speaks according to his actions.
--- Confucius

To teach is to learn.
--- Japanese proverb

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
--- Chinese proverb

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
--- Mark Van Doren

A teacher effects all eternity. You never know where his influence stops.
--- Henry Adams

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
--- William Arthur Ward

In teaching it is the method and not the content that is the message ... the drawing out, not the pumping in.
--- Ashley Montagu

Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training.
--- Anna Freud

The wise man, after learning something new, is afraid to learn anything more until he has put his first lesson into practice.
--- Tzu Lu

If a man empties his purse in his head, no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
--- Arthur Koestler

If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.
--- S.I. Hayakawa

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
---Carl Sagan

Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there's no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done.
--- Rudolf Flesch

The fundamental fact about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priests had said, "Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought." The Greeks said, "All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought."
--- Edith Hamilton

How do I work? I grope.
--- Albert Einstein

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
--- Francis Bacon

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
--- John Stuart Mill

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.
--- John Gardner

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
--- James. M. Barrie

It takes a long time to grow young.
--- Pablo Picasso

An unemployed existence is a worse negation of life than death itself. Because to live means to have something definite to do --- a mission to fulfill --- and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty ... Human life, by its very nature, has to be dedicated to something.
--- Jose Ortega y Gasset

The less of routine, the more of life.
--- A.B. Alcott

Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.
--- George Lois

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
--- Samuel Butler

If we knew what is was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
--- Albert Einstein

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
--- Mark Twain

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
--- Jawaharlal Nehru

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature ... is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.
--- Henri Frederic Amiel

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
--- Antoine de St. Exupery

That best portion of a good man's life? His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.
--- Wiliam Wordsworth

Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man.
--- John Steinbeck

Light your own way.
--- The Buddha

I once complained to my father that I didn't seem to be able to do things the same way other people did. Dad's advice? "Margo, don't be a sheep. People hate sheep. They eat sheep."
--- Margo Kaufman

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
--- Helen Keller

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
--- Charles Kingsley

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.
--- Richard Bach

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
--- Andre Gide

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
--- Erica Jong

Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self-love.
--- Francois de Fenelon

Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now, and do it. Today is your lucky day.
--- Will Durant

Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
--- Helen Keller

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiative (and creation). There is an elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.
--- Goethe

Opportunities multiply as they are seized; they die when neglected.
--- John Wicker

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
--- William Shakespeare

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.
--- Eddie Rickenbacker

Necessity makes even the timid brave.
--- Sallust

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
--- Ambrose Bierce

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
--- Eleanor Roosevelt

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
--- Pablo Picasso

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence in having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
--- Thamas Arnold Bennett

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
--- Henry Miller

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
--- Charles Darwin

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and only lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.
--- Nicolo Machiavelli

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done. --- Vincent Van Gogh

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
--- Marcus Aurelius

The wise man is he who does not grieve for the thing which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
--- Epictetus

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.
--- William James

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
--- Thomas Edison

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
--- Gandhi

Life is short. Live it up.
--- Nikita Khrushchev

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