Alan Perlis Quotes

Reading is more important than writing.

The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet

I worked in a number of high schools in New York, and I wound up at Stuyvesant High School, which is known nationally for producing brilliant scientists and mathematicians, but I had writing classes. I thought I was teaching. They thought I was teaching, but I was learning.

Anyone who doesn't read doesn't have any business writing.

I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.

I re-read the books I assign to my students. Each time I do, I learn something new.

I'd like to think that my mentors, I've had the highest of education and one thing I've always noted, they were always writing stuff down, taking notes.

I teach some of the guys stuff that I've learned.

The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned.

The number one goal of teachers should be to help students learn how to learn.

Teachers may think they are stuffing minds, but all they are ever affecting is the memory. Nothing can ever be forced into anyone's mind except by brainwashing, which is the very opposite of genuine teaching.

I think you should learn about writing from everybody who has ever written that has anything to teach you

The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education.

You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.

When someone is taught the joy of learning, it becomes a life-long process that never stops, a process that creates a logical individual. That is the challenge and joy of teaching.

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.

We can teach only if we are willing to learn.

I think you're not really teaching anyone unless you're learning yourself.

Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. And if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone; learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use.

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

When you're researching you're learning. When you're writing, you're teaching.

It is safer to learn than teach; and who conceals his opinion has nothing to answer for.

Teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation

I have never written a book that didn't teach me far more than it taught my reader.

To learn is a natural pleasure, not confined to philosophers, but common to all men.