Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. Learning isn’t just limited to the confines of a classroom. Life is perhaps the greatest teacher of all. You’re never too old or too much of an expert to learn something new. So much skill and knowledge accumulate from repeated experiences. The changes induced by learning often last a lifetime. We’re big believers in the importance of lifelong learning. We think that there is always something new to learn and that our learning journeys should never come to an end.

When I get in a situation where I feel like giving up, or like I’ll never be able to learn what I want to learn in the time I have, it can help to turn to some outside inspiration. History is full of visionaries who have their own strong convictions about the importance of learning. Below we’ve hand-picked 150 of our favorite quotes about learning. We tried to choose from a variety of thinkers, from teachers and writers to poets and farmers to philosophers and entrepreneurs to civil rights leaders and, in a few cases, even politicians.

150 Inspirational Learning Quotes

Top 10 Learning Quotes

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” – Confucius

“I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.” – Winston Churchill

“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” – Eric Hoffer

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy

“Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.” – Chinese Proverb

“Learning makes the wise wiser, and the foolish more foolish.” – English Proverb

“The greatest enemy of learning is knowing.” – John Maxwell

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

See also: knowledge quotes, wisdom quotes

What Is Learning?

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“Learning is synthesizing seemingly divergent ideas and data.” – Terry Heick

“Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.” – W. Edwards Deming

“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.” – Abigail Adams

“Learning is like mercury; one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skilful hands; in unskilful, the most mischievious.” – Pope

“Learning is a lifelong Process” – Peter Drucker

“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.” – Doris Lessing

“The essence of learning is the ability to manage change by changing yourself.” – Arie de Geus

“If you are willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.”

“Learning things is linear; growth is a curve, and learning hs to be bent in that curve before it’s part of a personality.” – Northrop Frye

“The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.” – Mortimer Adler

Inspirational Learning Quotes

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“All learning has an emotional base.” – Plato

“All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind.” – Martin Fisher

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.” – William Arthur Ward

“Even the genius asks questions.” – Tupac Shakur

“I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.” – Eartha Kitt

“I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large so that there is room for paradoxes.” – Maxine Hong Kingston

“If learning is an act of exploration, then technology equips the explorer for the journey of a lifetime. ”

“Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“One hour per day of study in your chosen field is all it takes. One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years you’ll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do.” – Earl Nightingale

“We learn from failure, not from success!” – Bram Stoker

“Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient.” – Eugene S. Wilson

“The human mind is our fundamental resource.” – John F. Kennedy

“Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.” – Brain Tracy

“To learn is no easy matter and to apply what one has learned is even harder.” – Mao Tse-Tung

“Wisdom is learning what to overlook.” – William James

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” – Albert Einstein

“You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it.” – John Updike

Famous Learning Quotes

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“I am still learning.” – Michelangelo

“He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.” – Confucius

“Be curious, not judgmental.” – Walt Whitman

“A man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” – Albert Einstein

“A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.” – Chinese Proverb

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” – Immanuel Kant

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” – Albert Einstein

“Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jepopardy.” – John Dewey

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Change is the end result of all true learning.” – Leo Buscaglia

“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

“Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest, Set less than thou throwest.” – William Shakespeare

“I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.” – Dudley Field Malone

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

“If you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you haven’t learning anything.” – Muhammad Ali

“In old days, men studied for the sake of self-improvement; nowadays men study in order to impress other people.” – Confucius

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking

“It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Knowledge, which is acquired under compulsion, obtains no hold on the mind.” – Plato

“Learn as though you would never be able to master it; hold it as though you would be in fear of losing it.” – Confucius

“Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.” – Confucius

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Much learning does not teach understanding.” – Heraclitus

“The doer alone learneth.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

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

“When there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing,many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.” – John Milton

“Yesterday i was clever, so i changed the world. today i am wise, so i am changing myself.” – Rumi

“You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way.” – Marvin Minsky

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates

Funny Learning Quotes

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

“A man who asks is a fool for five minutes. A man who never asks is a fool for life.” – Chinese Proverb

“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” – Mark Twain

“Expecting all children the same age to learn from the same materials is like expecting all children the same age to wear the same size clothing.” – Madeline Hunter

“I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” – Abraham Lincoln

“If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.” – Mark Twain

“Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key.” – Tom Colicchio

“Research shows that you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius.” – Michael J. Gelb

“Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” – African Proverb

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

“The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you.” – B.B. King

Lifelong Learning Quotes

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“We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” – Peter Drucker

“A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Keep Learning Quotes

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“What is important is to keep learning, to enjoy challenge, and to tolerate ambiguity. In the end there are no certain answers.” – Martina Horner

“Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked.” – Lord Chesterfield

“Let the improvement of yourself keep you so busy that you have no time to criticize others.”” – Roy T. Bennett

“Children want to learn to the degree that they are unable to distinguish learning from fun. They keep this attitude until we adults convince them that learning is not fun.” – Glenn Doman

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” – Henry Ford

“A plant needs roots in order to grow. With man it is the other way around: only when he grows does he have roots and feels at home in the world.” – Eric Hoffer

Continuous Learning Quotes

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“You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.” – Clay P. Bedford

“I realized that becoming a master of karate was not about learning 4,000 moves but about doing just a handful of moves 4,000 times.” – Chet Holmes

“Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can – there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.” – Sarah Caldwell

Life Learning Quotes

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“There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti

“There is divine beauty in learning…. To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps.” – Elie Wiesel

“The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.” – Antisthenes

“Life is a journey, not a destination.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If learning is an act of exploration, then technology equips the explorer for the journey of a lifetime.” – Anonymous

“A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.” – Vernon Howard

“Even without success, creative persons find joy in a joy well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.” – Wendell Berry

“The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn.” – Henry S. Haskins

“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realizes, the less I know.” – Michel Legrand

Always Learning Quotes

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“Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.” – Mark Twain

“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.” – Josh Waitzkin

“You learn something everyday if you pay attention.” – Ray Leblond

Teaching And Learning Quotes

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“We think too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough about effective methods of learning.” – John Carolus

“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 their own.” – Nikos Kazantzakis

“To teach a man how he may learn to grow independently, and for himself, is perhaps the greatest service that one man can do another.” – Benjamin Jowett

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” – Benjamin Franklin

“I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” – Albert Einstein

“Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.” – George Carlin

“A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.” – Thomas Carruthers

“Be stubborn about your goals and flexible about your methods.”

“Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves,” – Ernest Dimnet

“Developing a desire to learn is the kindling point of all classroom achievement.” – Robert John Meehan

“Don’t let your learning lead to knowledge. Let your learning lead to action.” – Jim Rohn

“Education is not the filling of a pot but the lighting of a fire.” – W.B. Yeats

“Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.” – Daniel Boorstin

“Education without application is just entertainment.” – Tim Sanders

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X

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

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” – Robert Frost

“Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.” – George Evans

“If you think education is expensive, try estimating the cost of ignorance.” – Howard Gardner

“Shall I tell you a secret of a true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point and in that I learn from him.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” – Herbert Spencer

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” – Carl Rogers

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” – Sydney J. Harris

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” – Lloyd Alexander

Learning From Mistakes Quotes

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“Never mistake a single mistake with a final mistake.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“A learning curve is essential to growth.” – Tammy Bjelland

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.” – Alexander Pope

“A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.” – Bruce Lee

“It is not hard to learn more. What is hard is to unlearn when you discover yourself wrong.” – Martin H. Fischer

“People learn something every day, and a lot of times it’s that what they learned the day before was wrong.” – Bill Vaughan

Learning From Failure Quotes

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“It is through suffering that learning comes.” – Aeschylus

“Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.” – Alexander Pope

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.” – Newton D. Baker

“Whoso neglects learning in his youth, Loses the past and is dead for the future.” – Euripides

Learning By Doing Quotes

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“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.” – Richard Branson

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Teenagers learn best by doing things, they learn best in teams and they learn best by doing things for real – all the opposite of what mainstream schooling actually does.” – Geoff Mulgan

“If you can’t learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.” – Ashleigh Brilliant

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” – Aristotle

“Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first.” – Ray Congdon

“Being a student is easy. Learning requires actual work.” – William Crawford

“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.” – Richard Branson

“A love of learning has a lot to do with learning that we’re loved.” – Fred Rogers

Learning And Development Qutoes

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“Development is a series of rebirths.” – Maria Montessori

“Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” – Anthony J.D’Angelo

“We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon truth, which is an idle and superficial learning; we must make it our own.” – John Timbs

“What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.” – Buddha

Learning Through Play Quotes

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“It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.” – Leo Buscaglia

“For children, play is a serious learning.” – Fred Rogers

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” – Richard Feynman

Which of these quotes about learning resonates most strongly with you? Leave a comment below, or drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn!