Higher Learning Quotes & Sayings

Nigger, you sure ought to be glad it was us you talked to that way. You're a lucky bastard, 'cause if you'd said that to some other white man, you might've been a dead nigger now." I was learning rapidly how to watch white people, to observe their every move, every fleeting expression, how to interpret what was said and what left unsaid. Late one Saturday night I made some deliveries in a white neighborhood. I was pedaling my bicycle back to the store as fast as I could when a police car, swerving toward me, jammed me into the curbing. "Get down, nigger, and put up your hands!" they ordered. I did. They climbed out of the car, guns drawn, faces set, and advanced slowly. "Keep still!" they ordered. I reached my hands higher. They searched my pockets and packages. They seemed dissatisfied when they could find nothing incriminating. Finally, one of them said: "Boy, tell your boss not to send you out in white neighborhoods at this time of — Richard Wright

Despite all the challenges facing higher education in America, from mounting student debt to grade inflation and erratic standards, our system is rightly the world's envy, and not just because our most revered universities remain on the cutting edge of research and attract talent from around the globe. We also have a plenitude and variety of settings for learning that are unrivaled. In light of that, the process of applying to college should and could be about ecstatically rummaging through those possibilities and feeling energized, even elated, by them. But for too many students, it's not, and financial constraints aren't the only reason. Failures of boldness and imagination by both students and parents bear some blame. The information is all out there. You just have to look. — Frank Bruni

Judge: And what is your occupation in general?
Brodsky: Poet, poet-translator.
Judge: And who recognized you to be a poet? Who put you in the ranks of poet?
Brodsky: No one. And who put me in the ranks of humanity?
Judge: Did you study it? ... How to be a poet? Did you attempt to finish an insitute of higher learning ... where they prepare ... teach
Brodsky: I did not think that it is given to one by education.
Judge: By what then?
Brodsky: I think that it is from God. — Joseph Brodsky

Black professors make more than white professors. That's because we are in demand. I'll tell you, give me two blacks in institutions of higher learning, one has a Ph.D. from an elite institution and has a certain publication record. You give me a white scholar with the same credentials, and I will take that black scholar. — William Julius Wilson

It has been remarked that when one passes among the patients of the psychiatric ward, he encounters among the several sufferers every aspect of normal personality in morbid exaggeration ... As one passes through the modern centers of enterprise and of higher learning, he is met with similar autonomies of development ... The scientist, the technician, the scholar, who have left the One for the Many are puffed up with vanity over their ability to describe precisely some minute portion of the world. Men so obsessed with fragments can no more be reasoned with than other psychotics. — Richard M. Weaver

Assessment coordinators need to be knowledgeable about general higher education topics (e.g., student persistence, the cost of higher education, diversity, and student learning); they must also know how those play out at specific institutions. — Kimberly Yousey-Elsener

Graduation, the hush-hush magic time of frills and gifts and congratulations and diplomas, was finished for me before my name was called. The accomplishment was nothing. The meticulous maps, drawn in three colors of ink, learning and spelling decasyllabic words, memorizing the whole of The Rape of Lucrece - it was for nothing. Donleavy had exposed us.
We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous. — Maya Angelou

Refering to the domain of knowledge, adab means an intellectual discipline (ketertiban budi) which recognizes and acknowledges the hierarchy of knowledge based on the criteria of degrees of perfection (keluhuran) and priority (keutamaan) such that the ones that are based on revelation are recognized and acknowledged as more perfect and of a higher priority than those based on the intellect; those that are fard 'ayn are above fard kifayah; those that provide guidance (hidayah) to life are more superior to those that are practically useful (kegunaan amali). Adab towards knowledge would result in the proper and correct ways of learning and applying different sciences. — Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

Culturally speaking, I was raised in a Jewish household. In addition to the religious side of it, I was taught respect for books and learning and the higher professions like medicine and law and teaching. — Woody Allen

The method of learning by trial and error - of learning from our mistakes - seems to be fundamentally the same whether it is practised by lower or by higher animals, by chimpanzees or by men of science. — Karl R. Popper

It's becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new ideas on particle physics. The energies in the Big Bang were far higher than we can ever achieve on Earth. So by looking at evidence for the Big Bang, and by studying things like neutron stars, we are in effect learning something about fundamental physics. — Martin Rees

Television is teaching all the time. Does more educating than the schools and all the institutions of higher learning. — Marshall McLuhan

You need your speace to strech your wings.You will learn in the due time to fly higher. — K.J. Kilton

I graduated from a place called Whitworth College in Spokane with a theater degree, then in 1993 I moved to L.A. and auditioned and did very well there. My first gig was playing a skinhead in John Singleton's 'Higher Learning', and I played Glenn Close's son in a TV movie called 'Serving In Silence.' — Trevor St. John

It is better to have but little knowledge with humility and understanding, than great learning which might make you proud. For a person's merits are not to be estimated by having many visions, or by knowledge of the bible, or by being placed in a higher position; but by being grounded in true humility, and by seeking always, purely, and entirely, the honor of God. — Thomas A Kempis

But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost
they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching. — Michael Crichton

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning. — B.B. King

And, to say truly, the greatest benefit that learning bringeth unto men is this: that it teacheth men that be rough and rude of nature, by compass and rule of reason, to be civil and courteous, and to like better the mean state than the higher. — Plutarch

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

When you feel life at crossroads,
you need higher perspective view. — Toba Beta

During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities. — Michael N. Castle

Parents who read to their children weekly or daily when they were young raised children who scored twenty-five points higher on PISA by the time they were fifteen years old. That was almost a full year of learning. More affluent parents were more likely to read to their children almost everywhere, but even among families within the same socioeconomic group, parents who read to their children tended to raise kids who scored fourteen points higher on PISA. By contrast, parents who regularly played with alphabet toys with their young children saw no such benefit. — Amanda Ripley

We have to make sure that college is accessible and affordable. Two years ago, I stood here and called upon our institutions of higher learning to develop plans for degrees that cost no more than $10,000. There were plenty of detractors at that time who insisted it couldn't be done. However, that call inspired educators at colleges and universities across our state to step up to the plate. Today, I'm proud to tell you that thirteen Texas universities have announced plans for a $10,000 degree. — Rick Perry

By learning to trust your intuition, miracles seem to happen. Intuitive thoughts are gifts from the higher self. — Susan Jeffers

To this day, most institutions of higher learning either do not know how to instruct students in reading beyond the elementary level, or lack the facilities and personnel to do so. — Mortimer J. Adler

An example is to say on one hand that this world is imperfect and on the other that everything that happens on the Earth is perfection. How can both be true? Well they are. From the perspective of everyday life, the world is not perfect. We have wars, hunger, disease, unhappiness and pain of all kinds. That's true. But from the perspective of the evolution of humanity everything is perfect. That's equally true. The only way we can evolve is by learning from experience and that means experiencing the consequences of our thoughts and actions. If there were no unpleasant consequences for our actions, how could we possibly learn and evolve to higher levels of understanding? — David Icke

You stay in the surreal world of so-called higher learning. You are comfortable there. You have very little reason to leave it. — Harlan Coben

It is somewhat ironic to have us so deeply disturbed over a program where race is an element of consciousness, and yet to be aware of the fact, as we are, that institutions of higher learning ... have been given conceded preferences to the children of alumni. — Harry A. Blackmun

We must look at what immigration to America involves. To the new arrivals, the change is excruciating. Learning a new language and dealing with strange customs make the first years of life in the new land painful ...
The economic system of the United States is a mighty engine of persuasion. It motivates people to do what otherwise they never would in return for fulfilling their dreams. In the process, people learn that there is no sharp line between physical well-being and the higher purposes of life. The comfort of owning a house is at once meeting the obligation to care for one — John Lachs

Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that's slightly below the average across all advanced economies. — Paul Krugman

He worried that he was destined to be a hobbyist, a dreamer incapable of finishing anything. The fact that the college seemed to encourage this kind of "experimentation" made him doubt its motives as an institution of higher learning. — Noah Hawley

What I call my philosophy of teaching is in fact a philosophy of learning. It comes out of Plato, modified. Before true learning can occur, I believe, there must be in the student's heart a certain yearning for the truth, a certain fire. The true student burns to know. In the teacher she recognizes, or apprehends, the one who has come closer than herself to the truth. So much does she desire the truth embodied in the teacher that she is prepared to burn her old self up to attain it. For his part, the teacher recognizes and encourages the fire in the student, and responds to it by burning with an intenser light. Thus together the two of them rise to a higher realm. So to speak. — J.M. Coetzee

By learning to contact, listen to, and act on our intuition, we can directly connect to the higher power of the universe and allow it to become our guiding force. — Shakti Gawain

Art is something greater and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from a man's soul. — Vincent Van Gogh

I have long since abandoned the notion that higher education is essential to either success or happiness. Hothouses of learning do not always grow anything edible. — Robert Moses

There is perhaps no truer sign that a man is really advancing than that he is learning to forget himself, that he is losing the natural thoughts about self in the thought of One higher than himself, to whose guidance he can commit himself and all men. — John Campbell Shairp

There is no doubt that the planet is going through a transformation where all of us are learning to recognize our wholeness. The soul is being grounded in a new way. As we bring love into all things we transform the planet into a higher vibration. — Dorothy Maclean

It is a mistake to think of these men as visionary dreamers, playing around at Philadelphia with abstract conceptions of political theory, pulling a whole scheme of government out of the air like a rabbit out of a hat. True, many of them had read and studied enough about the science of politics to put the average statesman of today to shame. But political science was to them an extremely practical topic of discussion, dealing with the extremely practical business of running a government
not, as today, a branch of higher learning reserved for the use of graduate students. — Fred Rodell

Then, too, I am constantly confronted by students, some of whom have already rejected all ways but the scientific to come to know the world, and who seek only a deeper, more dogmatic indoctrination in that faith (although the world is no longer in their vocabulary). Other students suspect that not even the entire collection of machines and instruments at MIT can significantly give meaning to their lives. They sense the presence of a dilemma in an education polarized around science and technology, an education that implicitly claims to open a privileges access-path to fact, but that cannot tell them how to decide what to count as fact. Even while they recognize the genuine importance of learning their craft, they rebel at working on projects that appear to address themselves neither to answering interesting questions of fact nor to solving problems in theory. — Joseph Weizenbaum

Of village: it is not called so because its inhabitants are of higher age on average; in fact, there is no connection between the words "village" and "age" whatsoever. — Jakub Marian

To the casual observer it may have looked like I was living a life of indolence, compared to the noisy industry with which the city to the north was ripping itself to pieces. It was true that, after a brief but regrettable entanglement with Higher Learning, I had fairly much confined my activities to the house and its environs. The simple fact of it was that I was happy there, and as I didn't have any skills to speak of, or gifts to impart, I didn't see why I ought to burden the world with my presence. It was not true, however, to say that I did nothing. — Paul Murray

The challenge is to keep learning and creating higher-order solutions rather than merely repeating the failed journeys of the past. — Kevan Hall

The poet discovers that what men value as substances have a higher value as symbols; that Nature is the immense shadow of man. A man's action is only a picture-book of his creed. He does after what he believes. Your condition, your employment, is the fable of you. The world is thoroughly anthropomorphized, as if it had passed through the body and mind of man, and taken his mould and form. Indeed, good poetry is always personification, and heightens every species of force in nature by giving it a human volition. We are advertised that there is nothing to which man is not related; that everything is convertible into every other. The staff in his hand is the radius vector of the sun. The chemistry of this is the chemistry of that. Whatever one act we do, whatever one thing we learn, we are doing and learning all things, - marching in the direction of universal power. Every healthy mind is a true Alexander or Sesostris, building a universal monarchy. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The theoretical frameworks we bring to our praxis and our own experiences as scholars of color coalesce with a fundamental assumption in ACL, that identity is central to our praxis as leaders, and that our work as scholars advocating for increased diversity of leadership in spaces of higher learning is very much informed by our own identities. — Lorri Santamaria

On June 20, 1951, less than four weeks after the Homer case broke, Hoover escalated the FBI's Sex Deviates Program. The FBI alerted universities and state and local police to the subversive threat, seeking to drive homosexuals from every institution of government, higher learning, and law enforcement in the nation. The FBI's files on American homosexuals grew to 300,000 pages over the next twenty-five years before they were destroyed. It took six decades, until 2011, before homosexuals could openly serve in the United States military. — Tim Weiner

What does it mean that the most popular and unifying form of entertainment in America circa 2014 features giant muscled men, mostly African-American, engaged in a sport that causes many of them to suffer brain damage? What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood - run, leap, throw, tackle - into a corporatized form of simulated combat? That a collision sport has become the leading signifier of our institutions of higher learning, and the undisputed champ of our colossal Athletic Industrial Complex? — Steve Almond

The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher. — John Holt

College football: I do not see the relationship of those highly industrialized affairs on Saturday afternoons to higher learning in America. — Robert Maynard Hutchins

We feel strongly that the spirit characteristic of America at its noblest, above all the pursuit of higher learning, cannot admit of any conditions as to personnel other than those designed to promote the objects for which this institution is established, and particularly with no regard whatever to accidents of race, creed, or sex. — Abraham Flexner

Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and a great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? — George Eliot

The left controls the media, the institutions of higher learning and the government. They preach against business, disparate merit, decry free enterprise and slander capitalism. — James Cook

Higher intelligence is not necessarily something you're born with or genetically predisposed toward. In fact, most instances of above-the-ordinary intelligences are usually acquired thru superior learning techniques ... Reading about the greatest minds in history, including recent history, more often than not reveals the individuals concerned (or people close to them) employed specific learning methods. — James Morcan

Allowing attachments to people/things create a compulsive addiction in us to be controlling. This "control" (fueled by fear of loss) fools us into a false sense of security and love. At first glance, it is common to confuse the idea of Conscious Detachment with non-feeling or being cold, however learning this skill is a giant leap towards enlightenment. When you consciously detach from an object or a loved one, you empower them to exist at their potential. From this perspective, just being in their presence fosters feelings of love and admiration that far exceed any relationship that is limited with expectations, confinement and control — Gary Hopkins

Left to our own devices, we are apt to backslide to our instinctive conceptual ways. This underscores the place of education in a scientifically literate democracy, and even suggests a statement of purpose for it (a surprisingly elusive principle in higher education today). The goal of education is to make up for the shortcomings in our instinctive ways of thinking about the physical and social world. And education is likely to succeed not by trying to implant abstract statements in empty minds but by taking the mental models that are our standard equipment, applying them to new subjects in selective analogies, and assembling them into new and more sophisticated combinations. — Steven Pinker

Knowing higher truths ensure that we have a larger perspective where all other things fall in place or start making sense. — Thomas Vazhakunnathu

Learning how to transcend consciousness to a higher consciousness is a blissful journey and the ultimate essence of life. — Debasish Mridha

We are an institution of high learning and higher manners. We simply cannot shoot first; it isn't done. Now, remember that, Miss Temminnick, do - a lady never shoots first. She asks questions, then she shoots. — Gail Carriger

The 2011 legislation was an effort to decrease the number of students competing with families and working people for scarce housing. San Francisco is home to 82,000 full-time students in 31 colleges and universities, but its institutes of higher learning provide housing for only about one-tenth of that population. In contrast, Boston successfully pushed its schools to meet the housing needs of 50 percent of students. The Board of Supervisors passed the law that made student housing exempt from the affordable-housing fee developers must pay. But with the exception of Kennedy, who has been building student housing in Berkeley for 20 years, no developers have stepped up to take advantage of the law. — Anonymous

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined? — Dorothy L. Sayers

Always set your goals higher than you could ever possibly reach. That way, when you barely fall short, you're still better than everybody else. — Carson V. Heady

We fill our lives with meaning by serving endlessly and by learning to transcend our consciousness to a higher consciousness. — Debasish Mridha

The supernova is enabling a deeper revolution that is just beginning, spurred by learning platforms such as Udacity, edX, and Coursera, that will change the very metabolism and shape of higher education and, one hopes, lift the adaptability line in the way that — Thomas L. Friedman

The process of truly learning is laborious, monotonous, and at times down right bitter and boring. Therefore, obtaining a truly higher education will require of you a determined mind and a will to stick and stay. In short, it will take discipline. But in the end, it will be worth it all. — Daniel Whyte III

I am here to give my players the little push they need, just like they needed long ago, when first learning the art of the swing. All you needed then was a little push, and quickly you were pumping away, flying higher and higher, without any more help from the 'coach.' — John Kessel

Learning to remain nonreactive is the name of the game. Does this mean living without passion? Absolutely not. Live, love, laugh, and learn - just don't be a sucker for drama. Live your life with enthusiasm and purpose, and don't be a pawn in someone else's vision for you. You drive. Better yet, let your Higher Self drive, and you relax. — Pedram Shojai

Unlike at the Academy or the Lyceum, women, some of them concubines and mistresses, as well as a few slaves, joined the conversation; further, many of the students here had arrived without academic credentials in mathematics or music, de rigueur for entry to the other Athenian schools of higher learning. Everyone in the Garden radiated earnestness and good cheer. The subject under discussion was happiness. — Epicurus

If Anonymous and Lulzsec are the id of hacking, then physical hackerspaces are the heart of the higher-minded hacking ideals: freedom of information, meritocracy of ideas, a joy of learning and anti-authoritarianism. — Heather Brooke

It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed — Idries Shah

This larger goal wouldn't be the imitation of education in Universities today, glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of something happening when, in fact, almost nothing is going on. It would be the real thing. — Robert M. Pirsig

Most institutions of higher learning in the West were founded by and for religious denominations. The supposed alienation of education and faith is a recent phenomenon. At the same time, neither education nor the lack of it predisposes one to faith. — Marilynne Robinson

My expectations from the university were perhaps too idealistic. I had dreams of learning things about innovation and discovery in the field of technology, but all of it hit the ground hard, when I faced with the pathetic reality of the so-called higher education system. To my surprise, I found myself stuck behind the walls of meaningless facts, figures and rankings. It occurred to me that, it was not actually a place for education, rather it was a place where you go to get your head filled with useless undigested information, that you'd probably never use throughout your entire life. It was not education, and moreover, it was definitely not science. — Abhijit Naskar

One of the most important lessons, perhaps, is the fact that SOFTWARE IS HARD. From now on I shall have significantly greater respect for every successful software tool that I encounter. During the past decade I was surprised to learn that the writing of programs for TeX and Metafont proved to be much more difficult than all the other things I had done (like proving theorems or writing books). The creation of good software demand a significiantly higher standard of accuracy than those other things do, and it requires a longer attention span than other intellectual tasks. — Donald Knuth

I see you resting and learning. I see you getting stronger. I see you preparing for greater things so you can take your life and business to a higher level. Always remember that our biggest battle comes before our greatest victory. — Jon Gordon

The Golden State has lost its luster. We've got to change our tax system and how we fund government. We're going to have to make it easier to create jobs in California, incentivize manufacturing, really put more in the way of investment in our public school system and our institutions of higher learning if we're going to stay the Golden State. — Antonio Villaraigosa

The limited mind owned by human..
requires billions of brains of many generations,
before capable enough to understand the truth,
the kind of truth which will set us free. — Toba Beta

Don't let yourself stagnate or reach a plateau. Keep learning, keep improving. Be open to change. Your ability to constantly raise the bar higher and set standards will help you evolve and take you to the next level. — Roopleen

See that your children are properly educated in the rudiments of their mother tongue, and then let them proceed to higher branches of learning.. — Brigham Young

Since its founding in 1854, Penn State has proven to be a leading institution of higher learning. — Tim Holden

It is equally unreasonable to run a university as a "participatory democracy," the approach to governance that once existed in Europe. That approach in European institutions of higher learning was appealing to professors because it was democratic. But those institutions also suffered because they lacked an executive decision-making process; making changes became virtually impossible. — Henry Rosovsky

The whole concept of higher education is negated unless the sole criterion used to determine if students qualify is the grades they score on standardized tests. Education is purely an issue of learning - we can no longer afford to have it polluted by damn politics. Leave pollution up to the politicians — Ray Bradbury

See what is worth learning, and what is worth doing. Thus, you gain an understanding of what is vital, and what is not vital. You need to learn what is important and what is not important. You need to understand what will move you upwards and onwards, and what will hinder you from traveling the higher path. — Goswami Kriyananda

If you always tend to avoid disappointment,
at least you have two issues to be dealt with:
The first is to soften the hardness of your heart;
The second is to solve problems that make you so. — Toba Beta

Emphasis must be put on learning: there is no substitute to education. It can be briefly formulated in a few words: always, whatever you do in life, think higher and feel deeper. — Elie Wiesel

Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it. — Stephen Vizinczey

Higher learning undergoes emotional pressure. — Toba Beta

There is no better place for learning to work independently and to extend your horizon than in higher school. — Mikhail Botvinnik

Education is the ability to retrieve information at will and analyze it. But you can't have higher-level learning- you can't analyze-without retrieving information.' And you can't retrieve information without putting the information in there in the first place. The dichotomy between "learning" and "memorizing" is false, Matthews contends. You can't learn without memorizing, and if done right, you can't memorize without learning. — Joshua Foer

Teacher cannot solve or heal all student stress. The teacher can be vigilant in trying to guide the child toward solutions;but the teacher's job in relation to this stress is ultimately to help the child learn to manage his or her own stress wisely. In accomplishing this, the teacher mentors higher academic learning by removing distracting stress, and teaches valuable life-survival skills. — Michael Gurian

New ideas for innovation grow out of the minds of each new generation. Having an institution of higher learning that can help young people put those ideas into action is critical. — Jay Samit