Confucius Quotes

Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned.

To learn without thinking is labour in vain, to think without learning is desolation.

This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind , and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections:;; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.

Learning, undigested by thought, is labor lost.

I think education is both using and improving knowledge and that changes the whole picture.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

What they can expect always is that they're going to be made to think.

Learn avidly. Question repeatedly what you have learned. Analyze it carefully. Then put what you have learned into practice intelligently.

It is only through reading that one can understand how people are smarter than you and what they have left behind for you.

Always make the choice to learn. What Princeton taught me was whatever mess you are studying, pull a thread with great persistence 'til you have clarity of thought. Princeton taught me how to solve a problem. How to think - that's what we pull out of this place.

If one learns from others, but does not think, one will be bewildered. If, on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one will be in peril.

The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of which made Pliny the Younger affirm that he never read book so bad but he drew some profit from it.

You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can't learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can't learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

When we learn to read, it's a real product of civilization and a civilized society. It affects your brain. It affects the way you think, and it gives you that capacity for self-reflection that you simply do not have without the agency of books.

We've taught you that the earth is round, That red and white make pink, And something else that matters more - We've taught you how to think.

The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think

Expertness of taste is at once the result and reward of constant exercise of thinking.

Learning is more than absorbing facts, it is acquiring understanding.

A successful day for me is when I teach people something. They become enlightened by an idea and learn how to think about it, so that later on when someone says, "Tell me about x, y, z," they don't have to say, "I know this because Tyson told me." No, they'll say, "Here's why it's true because I know and understand it."

To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.

To be radical is to grasp things by the root.

You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him think.

Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous.

The game is to keep learning, and I don't think people are going to keep learning who don't like the learning process.