··· Tags pointing to: learning ···

A student is not a container you have to fill but a torch you have to light up.

— Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions  <link>

Antilibrary

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with ‘Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?’ and others—a very small minority—who get the point that a private library is not an ego boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call the collection of unread books an antilibrary.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable  <link>

Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also, the mind of man.

— St. Teresa of Avila  <link>

A learning experience is one of those things that says, “You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.”

— Douglas Adams  <link>

I see little evidence that great learning or correct doctrine produces Christ-like people.

— Michael Spencer [via]  <link>