Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

It is with children that we have the best chance of studying the development of logical knowledge, mathematical knowledge, physical knowledge, and so forth.

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

Progress depends on our brain. The most important part of our brain, that which is neocortical, must be used to help others and not just to make discoveries.

If you give people literacy, bad ideas can be attacked and experiments tried, and lessons will accumulate.

Education makes us more stupid than the brutes. A thousand voices call to us on every hand, but our ears are stopped with wisdom.

The further forward we go, the further back we have to explore in order to go forward again.

In a world in which the total of human knowledge is doubling about every ten years, our security can rest only on our ability to learn.

I need to learn every day.

The more I can hear, the more I can learn, the better off I'll be.

You want to teach the next generation so they can learn a little bit faster and a little bit more so everything becomes that much better.

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.

The want of learning is a calamity to any people.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it .... For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?

The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds by experience; the stupid, by necessity; and brutes by instinct.

It is men of science who hold the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails. Theirs is the logic of discovery, the demonstration of the advance of knowledge and the development of ideas, which as the earthly wants and passions of men remain almost unchanged, are the charter of progress, and the vital spark in history.

Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power

Knowledge doesn't really form part of human nature. Conflict, combat, the outcome of the combat, and, consequently, risk and chance are what gives rise to knowledge. Knowledge is not instinctive; it is counter instinctive, just as it is not natural but counter natural.

I believe education is much more important than we assume.

I believe you learn every day.

Learning is a plant that grows in all climes.

We do not act because we know, but we know because we are called upon to act; the practical reason is the root of all reason.

It is part of my thesis that all our knowledge grows only through the correcting of our mistakes.

The more knowledge you have, the more you're free to rely on your instincts.

The sentiments of an adult are compounded of a kernel of instinct surrounded by a vast husk of education.

We do not progress from error to truth, but from truth to truth