True learning comes from engaging in discourse with those who are profoundly different. Your mind may not be swayed, but the interaction should open up your eyes.

The same is true for learning. True learning (as opposed to education) is a voluntary experience that requires tension and discomfort (the persistent feeling of incompetence as we get better at a skill).

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being — free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies — and therefore you can find out what religion is.

Real learning... is a thing in which the learner is not a receiver only of words written or spoken: he must be a doer.

To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.

Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning.

You see, true learning takes energy, passion, a burning desire.

Real understanding does not come from what we learn in books; it comes from what we learn from love of nature, of music, of man. For only what is learned in that way is truly understood.

Knowing is the task of Subjects, not of objects. It is as a subject, and only as such, that a man or woman can really know. In the learning process the only person who really learns is s/he who appropriates what is learned, who apprehends and thereby re-invents that learning; s/he who is able to apply the appropriated learning to concrete existential situations. On the other hand, the person who is filled by another with "contents" whose meaning s/he is not aware of, which contradict his or her way of being in the world, cannot learn because s/he is not challenged.

For only by knowledge of that which is not
Thyself shall thyself be learn'd.

On learning. — Learning is discovery, the discovery of the cause of our ignorance. However, the best way of learning is not the computation of information. Learning is discovering, uncovering what is there in us. When we discover, we are uncovering our own ability, our own eyes, in order to find our potential, to see what is going on, to discover how we can enlarge our lives, to find means at our disposal that will let us cope with a difficult situation. And all this, I maintain, is taking place in the here and now.

A good teacher knows that the best way to help students learn is to allow them to find the truth by themselves. Students don't learn by a mere transfer of knowledge, consumed through rote memorization and later regurgitated. True learning comes about through the discovery of truth, not through the imposition of an official truth.

The goal of intellectual life should be to see and understand what is true, not merely to adhere to a prevailing orthodoxy.

True learning only occurs when you assimilate and apply the new information — when there is a change in your behavior.