The three-legged stool of understanding is held up by history,
languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn
anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are
just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.
-- Robert Heinlein


A young man wrote to Mozart and said:
Q: "Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any
   suggestions as to how to get started?"
A: "A symphony is a very complex musical form, perhaps you should begin with
   some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony."
Q: "But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old."
A: "But I never asked anybody how."





Since I didn't know anything about physics or know any real math (I
had calculus in high school and enjoyed it, but had forgotten most of
it), I had to teach myself everything from scratch. Let me just say it
was a total blast. I _highly_ recommend everyone taking the time to
learn something really big and new every once in a while, in addition
to all the little things we're all [hopefully] learning every day. As
a bonus, it seems that the more we learn, the faster we're able to
learn even newer things, which makes the whole process even more
pleasurable.  -- Chris Hecker


It would be a mistake to assume that the present-day educational
system is unchanging. On the contrary, it is undergoing rapid
change. But much of this change is no more than an attempt to refine
the existent machinery, making it ever more efficient in pursuit of
obsolete goals.
 -Alvin Toffler



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



'I'm teaching you things all the time,' said Lu-Tze. 'You might not be
learning them, of course.'  
-- Terry pratchett, Thief of Time



One repays a teacher badly if one always remains a pupil only. Why do you
not pluck at my wreath?
- Nietzsche



"As a man of ideas, he craved to satisfy the thirst of his brain, to
assimilate every idea"
from 'Louis Lamert' by Honore De Balzac


"To teach a man how he may learn to grow independently, and for himself, is perhaps the greatest service that one man can do another." 
-Benjamin Jowett

All men by nature desire to know.
Aristotle


Along the path, glued to the windowpanes or hung on the bushes or
dangling from the ceiling, so that all free space was put to maximum
use, hundreds of little placards were displayed. Each one carried a
drawing, a photograph, or an inscription, and the whole constituted a
veritable encyclopedia of what we call 'human knowledge.' A diagram of
a plant cell, Mendeleieff's periodic table of the elements, a key to
Chinese writing, a cross-section of the human heart, Lorentz's
transformation formulae, each planet and its characteristics, fossil
remains of the horse species in series, Mayan hieroglyphics, economic
and demographic statistics, musical phrases, samples of the principal
plant and animal families, crystal specimens, the ground plan of the
Great Pyramid, brain diagrams, logistic equations, phonetic charts of
the sounds employed in all languages, maps, genealogies -- everything
in short which would fill the brain of a twentieth-century Pico della
Mirandola...
Rene Daumal, _Mount Analogue_


Toffler, Alvin "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those
who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and
relearn."



...since we can't know what knowledge will be most needed in the
future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we
should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so
well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be
learned.
John Holt

The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of
doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have
done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers.  Jean Piaget


After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They
were naturally good at it.
Terry Pratchett, Hogfather


Many have marked the speed with which Muad'dib learned the necessities
of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this
speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly
because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson
of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find
how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more
believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience
carries its lesson.
from "The Humanity of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan 
Dune 66

"Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master." 
       > Leonardo da Vinci 

"Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty ." 
Albert Einstein

A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the
Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And
drinking largely sobers us again.

The battle cry is "preparing students for the 21st century." This is
backward. We should be concerned about preparing a 21st century worthy
of our students.  Stephen L. Talbott


Battre nyfiken och obildad an bildad och likgiltig.
Robert Soderberg

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. 
                                  - Plutarch -

"The only rational way of educating is to be an example-- if one can't
help it, a warning example."  -- Albert Einstein

Education is the process of telling smaller and smaller lies.
\author{J. R. Deller, Jr.}
\attribute{{\it Tom, Dick, and Mary discover the DFT}}
\detailed{IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, April 1994, pp. 36}


  'He has mastered the 'How.'  Now he must learn the 'Why.''
                                -- Kung Fu: The Legend Continues

An all-knowing god never learns.
Mike Cowar

"You must be able to do something before you can be rewarded for doing it!"
Marvin Minsky (20th Century)