learning by doing

A lifelong learner is a lifelong winner.

— Matshona Dhliwayo

And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that o

— William Faulkner

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that or not.]

— William Faulkner

But if I hope to understand in order to accept things - the act of surrender will never happen. I must take the plunge all at once, a plunge that includes comprehension and especially incomprehension. And who am I to dare to think? What I have to do is surrender. How is it done? I know however that only by walking do you know how to walk and - miracle - find yourself walking.

— Clarice Lispector

But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.

— Joseph Conrad

Children are good learners. The first learn to act what they hear and see.

— Lailah Gifty Akita

Children learn from anything and everything they see. They learn wherever they are, not just in special learning places.

— John Holt

Each of us wages a private battle to thrive. Whenever a person fully immerses oneself in life’s aromatic flower garden of pleasures and encounters life’s warship of armor-plated rigors, they blend and bend to make reasonable accommodations for surviving. Scripted and unscripted encounters with superior militant forces bruise us mightily and eventually cut us to the core. Every person’s life contains a minefield of obstacles that function as potential barriers to achieving our ultimate manifestation. The expended labor of continuously hefting oneself over one contentious hurdle after another is what leads a conscientious person onto the path of needing to write in order to create emotional poultices to ameliorate painful wounds.

— Kilroy J. Oldster

Education is a choice. We don't become educated by watching television, and we don't learn a lot having similar conversations with the same, safe people day after day. Our education comes from pushing up against boundaries, from taking risks that may seem at first to be overwhelming, and by persevering past the first disappointments or shortfalls until we reach a point at which actual learning takes place. Determination and perseverance are absolutely vital to developing a true education--rarely, if ever, do we learn the most valuable lessons in the first few steps of the journey.

— Tom Walsh