I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

Most of us believe, or should believe, that every child can learn, given the opportunity, but try substitute teaching just once and you will see firsthand the socioeconomic issues that distract our kids from taking advantage of that opportunity.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

The unsuccessful person is burdened by learning, and prefers to walk down familiar paths. Their distaste for learning stunts their growth and limits their influence.

I keep working because I learn something new all the time.

The writer’s greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.

Everything I learned I learned from the movies.

I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

We go to school to learn to work hard for money. I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

The truth is, I have absolutely no professional credentials – literally, which is why I’m teaching at MIT.

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind – this attitude of uncertainty – is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.

To understand Europe, you have to be a genius – or French.

Instead of judging people, we need to pray.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

I don’t know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn’t hurt the book.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I’m a successful writer.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

If you don’t feel safe as a child, you can’t learn.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

Anyone who is practicing understanding and compassion can exemplify true power. Anyone can be a Buddha.

Each day we understand better what the Indians say, and they us, so that very often we are intelligible to each other.

The highest grade I’ve taught is the 11th grade, and the youngest I’ve taught is the 4th grade.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

It’s presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

I’ve worked with children all my life.

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.