Quote of the Day (Sir Francis Bacon, on ‘The Good Things of the Mind’)

“Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.” ― English essayist, philosopher and statesman Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), “Translation of the ‘De Augmentis’” (“On the Dignity and Advancement of Learning”), in The Works of Francis Bacon, Volume V, edited by James Spedding (1858)

Quote of the Day (Woodrow Wilson, on Universities and ‘The Object of Learning’)

“It is the object of learning not only to satisfy the curiosity and perfect the spirits of individual men, but also to advance civilization; and if it be true that each nation plays its special part in furthering the common advancement, every people should use its universities to perfect it in its proper role. A university should be an organ of memory for the state for the transmission of its best traditions. Every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation, as well as a man of his time.” —Woodrow Wilson, 28^th President of the United States and Princeton University President (1856-1924) , “University Training and Citizenship,” The Forum, September 1894, reprinted in The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson: College and State—Educational, Literary and Political Papers (1875-1913), edited by Ray Stannard Baker and William Dodd (1926)

Quote of the Day (Armen Sarkissian, on Learning and Living)

“Those people who know how to listen are also people who learn. The moment you stop learning, you die. Age is not the number of years that you have been living. Age is the condition of your soul.”—Former physicist and President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian, quoted in “Lunch(es) With the FT Armen Sarkissian: ‘The Moment You Stop Learning, You Die,’” The Financial Times, June 15-16, 2019

The image accompanying this post—the official portrait of Armen Sarkissian when he was President of Armenia—was taken June 5, 2018, and made available by the Press Service of the President of the Republic of Armenia.

Quote of the Day (Sir Francis Bacon, on ‘The Monuments of Wit and Learning’)

“The monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?”—English philosopher, scientist, essayist, and statesman Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Essex’s Device (1595)

Quote of the Day (Victor Hugo, on the Learned Man)

“The learned man knows that he is ignorant.” — French novelist-poet Victor Hugo (1802-1885), Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography (Postscriptum de Ma Vie), translated by Lorenzo O’Rourke (1907)

Quote of the Day (John F. Kennedy, on Leadership and Learning)

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” —President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), undelivered address at the Dallas Trade Mart, Nov. 22, 1963

There is, of course, a corollary to that statement: a leadership vacuum opens when learning does not occur.

Quote of the Day (Thomas Henry Huxley, on What We Should Learn)

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."—British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), inscribed on his memorial at Ealing, quoted in Nature, Vol. XLVI (October 30, 1902), p. 658.

Come to think of it, that’s not a bad description of what I’ve come to do while researching the more than 3,900 posts I’ve written since the start of this blog.

Quote of the Day (The Earl of Chesterfield, on How to ‘Wear Your Learning’)

“Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman.”-- Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, letter of Feb. 22, 1748, to his son Philip, in The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, with the Characters, Volume 1, edited by John Bradshaw (1892)

Quote of the Day (T.H. White, on Learning)

“’The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then–to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you.’”–T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone (1958)