Theodore Parker Quotes

I only surround myself with people who are intellectually stimulating.

The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

I like my mind being stimulated. I like discovering new concepts.

I think it's so important to feed your brain you know. Sometimes you've just got to read.

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork - reading, writing, thinking - can.

People simply learn to process information to the point where it doesn't serve true creativity.

I'm trying to start reading books that you gain knowledge from in order to challenge myself more. As a rule, I tend to read easy reading/populist-type books, but I don't feel like I'm learning enough.

I would say I have become a lot smarter in the way I understand things.

Any educated person recognizes that curiosity and creativity aren't just important; they are among the essential human activities.

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

A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them.

Learning is more than the acquisition of the ability to think; it is the acquisition of many specialized abilities for thinking about a variety of things.

We should always choose our books as God chooses our friends, just a bit beyond us, so that we have to do our level best to keep up with them.

At the age of 18 I don't think that I thought very differently than I did at the age of 25. I think we instinctively have the knowledge and adapt the knowledge we need.

By the end of the book, it is quite different than the way you thought it would be when you started the book - both in form and what it contains and what you think. Well, you tipped in a lot and you digested a lot - it wasn't pre-digested in your view. And it changed what you thought and how you see things.

Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.

By playing games you can artificially speed up your learning curve to develop the right kind of thought processes.

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

Education is the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

In a sense, there's a great truth to that, but, also I was a great reader.

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.