To Unlearn Quotes & Sayings

How to get rid of having anything to unlearn. — Antisthenes

The child is aware of unlimited potential, and this munificence is one of the joys of creativity.
Those of use who struggle in our own ways, small or great, trickles or rivers, to create, are constantly having to unlearn what the world would teach us... — Madeleine L'Engle

Children can be taught meditation more easily because they are not yet spoiled. When you have been spoiled the hard work is to help you to unlearn. — Rajneesh

A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily. — Alan W. Watts

Before people can begin something new, they have to end what used to be and unlearn the old way. — William Bridges

I found a lot of animators bring a lot of baggage to the party, just that there's a certain way of doing things in that world that's a little hard to unlearn. — Steve Dildarian

Slowly we are learning,
We at least know this much,
That we have to unlearn
Much that we were taught,
And are growing chary
Of emphatic dogmas;
Love like Matter is much
Odder than we thought. — W. H. Auden

We can't unlearn what we already know and there are only two ways to beat the curse, the first is not to learn anything, the second is to transform our ideas. — Chip Heath

So many people around the world have used nonviolence as a way to resolve a conflict that they faced in their lives. And they continue to use it everywhere all over the world there. And I think, in a way, nonviolence is our nature. Violence is not really our nature. If violence was our nature, we wouldn't need military academies and martial arts institutes to teach us how to kill and destroy people. We ought to have been born with those instincts. But the fact that we have to learn the art of killing means that it's a learned experience. And we can always unlearn it. — Arun Manilal Gandhi

Shifting the focus from the teacher to the learner will take time and training, but it will also take the willingness to 'unlearn' what so many have been taught about student learning and teacher control. We can admire this dilemma for as long as we want, but the truth is, 'the train has left the station' and the learners are on it." - Jackie Johnston, Director of Alternative and Community Education, District 112, Minnesota — Barbara A. Bray

This world is changing enormously. In any position in a company you need to work very hard on learning new skills every day, but you also need to unlearn some of the old skills from the past. — Paul Polman

One of my young married students has suffered all her life because she was taught in her Church that she was born so sinful that the only way the wrath of God the Father could be appeased enough for him to forgive all her horrible sinfulness was for God the Son to die in agony on the cross. Without his suffering, the Father would remain angry forever with all his Creation.
Many of us have had a least part of that horror thrust on us at one time or other inour childhood. For many reasons I never went to Sunday School, so I was spared having a lot of peculiar teaching to unlearn. It's only lately that I've discovered that it was no less a person than St. Anselm who saw the atonement in terms of appeasement of an angry God, from which follows immediately the heresy that Jesus came to save us from God the Father. — Madeleine L'Engle

Acting was all about making yourself feel things-love,rage,euphoria,agony. She had to unlearn those things now. She had to teach herself not to feel. Refusing to feel hurt also meant she numbed herself to joy, but the sacrifice was worth it. — Susan Wiggs

With mindfulness there is more to unlearn than there is to learn. — Michael H. Brooks

Every student who enters upon a scientific pursuit, especially if at a somewhat advanced period of life, will find not only that he has much to learn, but much also to unlearn. — John Herschel

Good," said the First Speaker. "And tell me, what do you think of all this. A finished work of art, is it not?"
"Definitely!"
"Wrong! It is not." This, with sharpness. "It is the first lesson you must unlearn. The Seldon Plan is neither complete nor correct. Instead, it is merely the best that could be done at the time. Over a dozen generations of men have pored over these equations, worked at them, taken them apart to the last decimal place, and put them together again. They've done more than that. They've watched nearly four hundred years pass and against the predictions and equations, they've checked reality, and they have learned. — Isaac Asimov

The ONLY thing you should be saying to be is that you recognize that you were born into a racist, white supremacist system that imbued you with racist ideals from birth. That you recognize your racism, privilege, and inherent bias and are actively working to unlearn it. If you are not saying that then you are not saying anything, and you don't have permission to speak to me. — Seren Sensei

You can't unlearn something, even if you want to. You know what you know. — Sarah Dessen

Holidays are also an opportunity for kids to unlearn every good habit they've learned during the rest of the year. They don't go to school. They get to stay up past their bedtime. They get candy and presents for doing nothing. Childhood utopia. — Jim Gaffigan

Any change of government which has to be introduced should be one which men, starting from their existing constitutions, will be both willing and able to adopt, since there is quite as much trouble in the reformation of an old constitution as in the establishment of a new one, just as to unlearn is as hard as to learn. — Aristotle.

One way or another, we spend our whole lives being conditioned into accepting some line or order, some position of domination or subjection. It's hard to unlearn such hierarchy, to undo such control. It's implicit. — Cliff James

I believe in total immersion, if you want to be rich, you have to program your mind to be rich. You have to unlearn all the thoughts that were making you poor and replace them with new thoughts - rich thoughts. — Jordan Belfort

I do wonder, sometimes, if I had had a daughter, how I would have brought her up. How - when it's taken me so long to unlearn the things I believe are most damaging to the cause of women's liberation and equality - would I have raised my daughter to disobey? — Mona Eltahawy

Our natural state is trust
in ourselves
in others
until we learn differently
then we hurt as we try to unlearn it
until it dawns on our hearts that if we live and act with pure intent
we do not need trust. — Cathrine Lodoen

Intelligence is what we learn.
Wisdom is what we unlearn. — J.R. Rim

We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. — Julia Ward Howe

That foundation rested on our critique of what we then called 'the enemy within,' referring to our internalized sexism. We all knew firsthand that we had been socialized as females by patriarchal thinking to see ourselves as inferior to men, to see ourselves as always and only in competition with one another for patriarchal approval, to look upon each other with jealousy, fear, and hatred. Sexist thinking made us judge each other without compassion and punish one another harshly. Feminist thinking helped us unlearn female self-hatred. It enabled us to break free of the hold patriarchal thinking had on our consciousness. — Bell Hooks

Now, we all have stories of how we got here, and prob-probably some of you feel angry who whoever it is who's left you here. But you must try and remember that they were like that because that's how they were taught to be. You m-must try to forgive them. Baby cuckoos can't unlearn their bad habits. But we should try to, and because what you learn as a ch-child you will pass on to people around you, from now on this house is going to be a house of happiness. From this evening on every single one of us is going to consider other people's feelings. — Georgia Byng

We are so trained in the thought system of fear and attack that we get to the point where natural thinking - love - feels unnatural and unnatural thinking - fear - feels natural. It takes real discipline and training to unlearn the thought system of fear. — Marianne Williamson

Traditional ad agencies have so much to unlearn. — Edward Boches

Jesse swallowed and looked around the field. Roe could see him struggling with his thoughts, trying to put them in a coherent order. "It takes me a long time to learn things," he told Roe finally. "When I learn 'em, I try to hold on real tight. It's kindy scary for me to try to unlearn 'em. — Pamela Morsi

The mind is slow to unlearn what it learnt early. — Seneca The Elder

In the year 2000 an illiterate person will not be someone who can't read or write, but someone who is not able to learn, unlearn and learn again. — Alvin Toffler

Unfortunately, it will take more than one conversation to unlearn the lies we learned growing up. We learned those lies situation by situation, and I am afraid we'll have to unlearn them the same way. — Barb Raveling

There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love. — W. H. Auden

People are worn away with striving, they hide in common habits. their concerns are herd concerns. few have the ability to stare at an old shoe for ten minutes or to think of odd things like who invented the doorknob? they become unalive because they are unable to pause undo themselves unkink unsee unlearn roll clear. listen to their untrue laughter, then walk away. — Charles Bukowski

We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. — Jack Gilbert

Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat? — Charles Lamb

We do not have thousands of years to unlearn the wrong patters that were established over thousands of years. The exponential speed-up of these cumulative patterns of destruction means we have to both learn new patterns and put them into practice on a global scale within the next generation. — Rosemary Radford Ruether

We know that to become a Christian we shouldn't try to fix ourselves up, but when it comes to praying we completely forget that. We'll sing the old gospel hymn, "Just as I Am," but when it comes to praying, we don't come just as we are. We try, like adults, to fix ourselves up. Private, personal prayer is one of the last great bastions of legalism. In order to pray like a child, you might need to unlearn the nonpersonal, nonreal praying that you've been taught. — Paul Miller

The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear. — Bertrand Russell

It is a hard thing to break through a habit and a yet harder thing to go contrary to our own will. Yet if thou overcome not slight and easy obstacles how wilt thou overcome greater ones Withstand thy will at the beginning and unlearn an evil habit lest it lead thee little by little into worse difficulties. Oh if thou knewest what peace to thyself thy holy life should bring ... and what joy to others methinketh thou wouldst be more zealous for spiritual profit. — Thomas A Kempis

When I am with my mother's people, I realize I have a lot to unlearn. I look to them to uncomplicated my notions of Tibet and Tibetans. They know where they are from; they live on the land. This assurance does not come in the same way to those of us in exile who experience a lack of certainty for is it not from the land that we get a sense of stability? Those of us born in exile inherit Tibet by inhabiting the memories of our elders. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Rookie smarts isn't an age or an experience level; it is state of mind - one that is available to those willing to unlearn and relearn. It is also a choice. As — Liz Wiseman

Vulcan is long gone, almost completely forgotten. It may seem today to be merely a curiosity, just another mistake our ancestors made, about which we now know better. But the issue of what to do with failure in science was tricky right at the start of the Scientific Revolution, and it remains so now. We may - we do - know more than the folks back then. But we are not thus somehow immune to the habits of mind, the leaps of imagination, or the capacity for error that they possessed. Vulcan's biography is one of the human capacity to both discover and self-deceive. It offers a glimpse of how hard it is to make sense of the natural world, and how difficult it is for any of us to unlearn the things we think are so, but aren't. — Thomas Levenson

Most of my life, I've been on a film set. There isn't anything to learn, not learn, unlearn. It's just in me. — Samantha Morton

It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. — Charles Caleb Colton

Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things. — William James

But these trees don't grow impatiently. They move with a grace, with patience, with trust. There is no hurry anywhere else except in your mind. If you really want to be in a state of peace and joy, you will have to unlearn your old habit for achieving things quickly — Osho

You should deal sternly and despotically with your memory, so that it does not unlearn obedience; if, for example, you cannot call something to mind, a line of poetry or a word perhaps, you should not go and look it up in a book, but periodically plague your memory with it for weeks on end until your memory has done its duty. For the longer you have had to rack your brains for something the more firmly will it stay once you have got it. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A new medium always has a period when it is struggling inside the confining box of an earlier medium. Creators have to unlearn what they knew before they can see the fresh, uncharted vistas stretching before them. — Dave Morris

When asked what learning was the most necessary, he said, "Not to unlearn what you have learned!" — Diogenes Laertius

By instructing students how to learn, unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education. Psychologist Herbert Gerjuoy of the Human Resources Research Organization phrases it simply: 'The new education must teach the individual how to classify and reclassify information, how to evaluate its veracity, how to change categories when necessary, how to move from the concrete to the abstract and back, how to look at problems from a new direction - how to teach himself. Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn. — Alvin Toffler

Mediation - Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be. — Idries Shah

Did I seek where the wind bites keenest, learn to live where no one lives, in the desert where only the polar bear lives, unlearn to pray and curse, unlearn man and god, become a ghost flitting across the glaciers? — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials. Through every cloud He brings our way, He wants us to unlearn something. — Oswald Chambers

The kids silenced.
"OK,"' Julia said. "Well, as you probably know, I'm Sam's mom. He told me not to make a big deal, so I'll keep this to the essentials. First, I want to let you all know how totally psyched I am to be here with you."
Sam closed his eyes, willing himself to unlearn object permanence. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The way to find your own North Star is not to think or feel your way
forward but to dissolve the thoughts and feeling that make you miserable.
You don't have to learn your destiny
you already know it; you just have to unlearn the thoughts that blind you to what you know. — Martha Beck

Representational painters: loosen the grip of inflexibility! Abstract painters: tighten your hold on crafting your images! In both types of painting students need to unlearn what one has acquired. — Joshua L. Goldberg

I wanted to teach my daughter the same things I had to unlearn after years spent as a corporate lawyer: that soul is more important than money, that love means more than material things. (James Griffioen) — Heather B. Armstrong

It's better to know nothing than to have to unlearn false wisdom. — Edward W. Robertson

I don't think you ever learn just one thing. At some point you start unlearning things. I have been working hard to unlearn everything I know. — Terry Gilliam

To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods. — Robert A. Heinlein

Girls are supposed to be feminine and demure. Comedy isn't about that, so you just have to unlearn it. Certain women are so pretty, they can't go weird enough to be funny. You have to be willing to be ugly. I'm lucky my face can look so hideous. — Jennifer Coolidge

The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Love isn't something you can just unlearn ... no matter who you are, or who you're born to, or how much it's not returned - - Elephant Girl — Jane Devin

Time when learning how to learn (and unlearn) is central to success. Instead of hiding from change, let's embrace it. Each time we try something new, we get better at getting better. Experience builds competence and confidence, so we're ready for the big changes, like re-thinking what we do. — Peter Morville

We need to unlearn some of our respect for education, since it has undermined our respect for ourselves. — Gloria Steinem

Just know that it takes a bit of courage to unlearn that shame, and to be there for others when they try to unlearn that shame, and that it all gets easier after you feel how healthy it is. — Hugh Howey

Neither of us seemed able to be close to
anyone. Not even each other. Closeness
meant the one you loved the most would
cause you the most damage. How did you
unlearn that? It was woven deep between
every fiber and vessel. You couldn't cut it
out. — Lisa Kleypas

As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life. It is never isolated, or simply added as treasure to our stock. When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before. — Henry David Thoreau

If you are well educated, and especially if you are a health professional, you will have to unlearn much of what you've been taught and start afresh with the rather disruptive thought that natural healing may actually work. — Andrew Saul

Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn. — Larry Niven

It is not difficult to learn a new idea, but it is almost impossible to unlearn an old one. — Debasish Mridha

Learn so carefully in life,learning is tough not impossible But if once you learn wrong then its almost impossible to unlearn — Mohammed Zaki Ansari

Every day you must unlearn the ways that hold you back. You must rid yourself of negativity, so you can learn to fly. — Leon Brown

half Scottish, respectable, and imbued with the powerful emotional restraint that those races have inherited somehow (via God knows what route) from the Spartans. It was a matter of self-conquest, refusal to show weakness, refusal to become a burden to others. This inheritance does not diminish one's natural sympathies, it merely makes them harder to express and to receive, and it is a legacy which it is extremely hard to unlearn. — Louis De Bernieres

We have forgotten how to have fun. We unlearn fun. Every interaction with women should be infused with fun. This includes the way we meet, the way we date, the way we are together in bed, and the way we are together in relationship. If it isn't fun, what's the point? If it isn't fun, it needs to be left behind. Because... why not? We are treasure hunters, adventurers, raconteurs, are we not? — Zan Perrion

I am trying to unlearn many lessons of gender I internalized while growing up. But I sometimes still feel vulnerable in the face of gender expectations. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We unlearn the art of speaking well when we cease to speak with God. — John Calvin

She was telling me that I had a life of disappointment before me if I continued to love him as I did. A love that is too strong can turn poisonous and bring great unhappiness. And then, what is the remedy? Can you unlearn your heart's desire? Can you stop loving someone? Easier to drown yourself; easier to take the lover's leap. — Alma Katsu

They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn. — John Lancaster Spalding

I love my life because a part of me has learned how to give up hope, and that, I suspect, is a dangerous lesson to unlearn. — Joel Derfner

I really had no religious upbringing, which is unusual. But I think it saved me, because when I found the theory that I wanted to follow, I did not have anything to unlearn. — Louise Hay

To Unlearn is as hard as to Learn — Aristotle.

You should do what you enjoy doing, what brings you passion. As kids, we spontaneously sing and dance and tell stories, and along the way, someone comes and says, 'No. You shouldn't be doing that.' And we slowly begin to unlearn our passions. I think you have to hold on to those things. — J. Michael Straczynski

In times of tumult and transition the best leaders know when it is time to stop, unlearn, and relearn. — Liz Wiseman

But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion. — Kathleen Norris

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system. — Charles Bukowski

The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect. — Willa Cather

Unlearn your knowledge about what WAS working to understand what is working NOW — Roger James Hamilton

We all would love sometimes to be free from our own knowledge. It is even the most difficult to unlearn - as the most important problems are. — Ernst Haas

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn. — Gloria Steinem

Oh, my faith has flagged at times. It's easy to fall back into the same routines and paint over the sublime with coat after coat of indifference ... I promise you something: when you have touched the face of God, you can never unlearn what you have learned. You can never unsee what you have seen. — Garth Stein

The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue. — Antisthenes

Wisdom comes to those who learn nothing, unlearn everything. — Anthony De Mello

It took me many years to lose my spirit, to unlearn thinking and forget the unity. Isn't it just as if I had turned about slowly and was on a long detour from being a man to being a child, from a thinker to a childlike person? And yet, this path has been very good, and the bird in my chest has not died. But what a path this has been! I had to pass through so much stupidity, so many vices, so many errors, so much disgust, so many disappointments and woes just to begin again. But it was fitting this way; my heart says "Yes" to it and my eyes smile at it. I've had to experience despair. I've had to descend to the most foolish of all thoughts
the thought of suicide
in order to be able to experience divine grace, to hear "Om" again, to be able to sleep and awaken properly again [ ... ] Where else might my path lead me? This path is foolish; it moves in loops, and perhaps it is going around in a circle. Let it go where it likes; I want to follow it. — Hermann Hesse

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. — Charles Bukowski

To design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap — Alain De Botton

The only person who is spiritually smart is the one who has learned how to learn, unlearn, and change directions instantly, and start all over again, if your soul calls for it. — Michelle Casto