Carroll Quigley Quotes

Learning how to learn is the most precious thing we have in life.

Seriously. I'm not very bright, and it takes a lot for me to get a concept - to really get a concept. To get it enough that it becomes part of me. But when it happens I get real excited about it.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

I can't talk about anything or write about anything if I don't understand it. So a lot of the stuff that I go through and a lot of the time that I spend is understanding.

In fourth grade, I learned that reading was serious business, not just a pleasant way to pass the time, and that like medicine or engineering, it had a definite, valuable purpose: to foster 'comprehension.'

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers

The savage and women are not what we call intellectual because they are not taught to know and manipulate the materials of knowledge.

We are not only what we read. We are how we read.

I like to read and understand.

Kids aren't dumb - they might not get something, but they're going to figure it out.

Intelligence is an extremely subtle concept. It's a kind of understanding that flourishes if it's combined with a good memory, but exists anyway even in the absence of good memory. It's the ability to draw consequences from causes, to make correct inferences, to foresee what might be the result, to work out logical problems, to be reasonable, rational, to have the ability to understand the solution from perhaps insufficient information. You know when a person is intelligent, but you can be easily fooled if you are not yourself intelligent.

Oh, I have a habit of letting myself be lectured on the things I know best. I like to see if they are understood in the same way I understand; for there are many ways of knowing the same thing

Knowledge is not a loose leaf notebook of facts.

Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

There is a difference between people who are educated and people who are smart.

Man's best candle is his understanding.

I've got to relearn what I was supposed to have learned.

The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.

Books have this function that help me to understand the work I've done, to wrap it up.

Then I obviously didn't understand what it all meant, but I do now.

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.