Unlearn Quotes

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

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

We are not born women of color. We become women of color. In order to become women of color, we would need to become fluent in each others' histories, to resist and unlearn an impulse to claim first oppression, most-devastating oppression, one-of-a-kind oppression, defying comparison oppression. We would have to unlearn an impulse that allows mythologies about each other to replace knowing about one another. We would need to cultivate a way of knowing in which we direct our social, cultural, psychic, and spiritually marked attention on each other. We cannot afford to cease yearning for each others' company. ~ M. Jacqui Alexander

Our Egos constantly strive to destroy our pure joy and happiness."

"If you say that you would love to do something, it is your responsibility to make it happen."

"Whether you like it or not you are on a spiritual quest; it is just a matter of which path you choose to take"

"Spirituality is very simple; you must unlearn all the faulty knowledge acquired from society"

" We must return to the wonder and mystery of childhood to be genuinely enlightened." (Came to me when staring into my sons eyes)

" Look into an infants eyes and you will see the true nature of life"

" Death is inevitable, but life is optional. ~ Richard A. Singer Jr.

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

Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with "but." If that's what you learned, unlearn it - there's no stronger word at the start. It announces a total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is thereby primed for the change. ~ William Zinsser

The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them. ~ Henry Bolingbroke

Let's face it. It's taken years for you to learn to be the person you are, so you're not going to change overnight. But the good news in that you can unlearn those aspects that you want to change and chart a new path in life. And it's never too late to start, whether you're 20, 40, 60, or 80! ~ Kevin Leman

There's very little to be said for learning a piece note by note, reading the rhythmic markings, practising the fingerings and following your instructor's suggestions, if you haven't any idea how the music will eventually sound and feel. If you learn a piece mechanically, you may have to 'unlearn' it before you can play it with expression and feeling. ~ Barry Green

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

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

An awakened mind
and heart will serve
you well. Rigidity stalls
upward progress. Be as
expansive as you can.
Even when you think
you've reached your
limit, there's more to
unlearn and relearn. ~ Kristen Lee

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

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

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

I wonder in what way I would function as a person, in a society without ever attending school. I'd be myself. ~ J.R. Rim

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

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
 all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. ~ Julia Ward Howe

Every increase in your knowledge is a simultaneous decrease. You learn and you unlearn at the same time. A new certainty is a new doubt as well. ~ Brian Eno

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

Perhaps when I am grown I will not know anything. Perhaps that is the way it works, the way it is with growing. When you grow, you start to unlearn things. ~ Gary Paulsen

When negotiations are at an impasse, when States dig their heels in, it is time to 'undig' them in a spirit of compromise. We all need to unlearn the predator in us, unlearn discrimination, unlearn privilege. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

And learn how to unlearn the past, Remember no more than how to breathe, The more you are lost and all alone, The more of yourself you can own… ~ Piyush Rohankar

Taste is acquired. You may have to unlearn a taste for chocolate or ice cream. ~ Diane Von Furstenberg

Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion,
you ruin what was almost ripe.
Therefore the Master takes action
by letting things take their course.
He remains as calm at the end
as at the beginning.
He has nothing,
thus has nothing to lose.
What he desires is non-desire;
what he learns is to unlearn.
He simply reminds people
of who they have always been.
He cares about nothing but the Tao.
Thus he can care for all things. ~ Lao-Tzu

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

Tear It Down"

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body. ~ Jack Gilbert

Imagine this - your son went through all of that too," I said. "He also has to deprogram himself out of thinking it's bad, out of hating himself, into accepting and eventually maybe even loving himself. People don't realize that when people finally admit to themselves that they're gay, they also have to unlearn all that crap about who they have to be or how they have to act. ~ Stephen Snyder-Hill

Unlearn, I pray you, this "for," ye creating ones: your very virtue wisheth you to have naught to do with "for" and "on account of" and "because." Against these false little words shall ye stop your ears. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The fierce poet of the Middle Ages wrote, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," over the gates of the lower world. The emancipated poets of to-day have written it over the gates of this world. But if we are to understand the story which follows, we must erase that apocalyptic writing, if only for an hour. We must recreate the faith of our fathers, if only as an artistic atmosphere. If, then, you are a pessimist, in reading this story, forego for a little the pleasures of pessimism. Dream for one mad moment that the grass is green. Unlearn that sinister learning that you think is so clear, deny that deadly knowledge that you think you know. Surrender the very flower of your culture, give up the very jewel of your pride, abandon hopelessness, all ye who enter here. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Vipassan meditation is the best way to unlearn old habits of basal ganglia and amygdala, and strengthen the neocortex of the brain. ~ Amit Ray

The most valuable skill we can learn in our lives is to unlearn what is untrue. ~ Antisthenes

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

When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands. ~ Moby

Practice. Learn and then unlearn - that's the trick in finding your own style of playing. You can't merely emulate, you have to innovate, or at the very least create your own path into the process. ~ Carrie Brownstein

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

Unbeknownst to me, it had become my mission to prove that the world isn't the horrible place we often make it out to be. That just because there are some dirty fish, it doesn't mean the entire ocean is dirty and we need to confine ourselves to the shores we know. The fear bred by the news compels people to stay at home - trapped in a shrinking comfort zone - like it had once compelled me. I had much to unlearn for the sake of the freedom I chased, the victimhood I despised and my mission to build unlikely friendships. ~ Shivya Nath

We must passionately learn, unlearn and relearn. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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

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

The challenge for a mentee is not only to learn what he doesn't know, but also to unlearn what he thinks he knows. ~ Orrin Woodward

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

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

The Time we learn what to unlearn is the time we grow up. ~ Bishmeet Singh

He who learns death unlearns slavery. ~ Cornel West

Not to unlearn what you have learned is the most necessary kind of learning. ~ Antisthenes

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

Growing spiritual is learning what we don't know the other half is to unlearn everything we do know. ~ Anita Frost

Chris hurried after him. 'It's so hard to believe we just travelled hundreds of light years.'
'Why?' asked the Doctor.
'I always understood that you cannot travel faster than light,' said Chris.
'Says who?'
'Says Einstein,' said Chris.
'What?' The Doctor stopped and put an arm around Chris's shoulder. 'Do you understand Einstein?'
Chris wasn't sure where this was going. 'Yes.'
'What?' gasped the Doctor. 'And quantum theory?'
'Yes,' said Chris. He basked in the Doctor's astonishment, on firmer ground at last.
'What?' gasped the Doctor. 'And Planck?'
'Yes,' said Chris.
'What?' gasped the Doctor. 'And Newton?'
'Yes!' said Chris.
'What?' gasped the Doctor. 'And Schoenberg?'
Chris paused. Was it a trick question? He recalled reading about the crisis of tonality. He thought he'd caught most of it, so he answered proudly, 'Yes. Of course.'
The Doctor whistled, apparently impressed. Then he said, 'You've got an awful lot to unlearn, Bristol. ~ Gareth Roberts

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

Once you know what's in your food you can't unlearn it. ~ Vani Hari

Unlearn everything you know. Become a stranger to every person you've ever connected to. ~ Basith

Practice the vocabulary of love - unlearn the language of hate and contempt. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

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

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

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 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

We need to unlearn our respect for education, since it has undermined our respect for ourselves. It's worth taking time to demistify it. [...] All the things an adolescent can be [...] are reduced to a three digit number. [...] We too can decide how to value our education instead of letting them value us. ~ Gloria Steinem

I tell students, 'If you are learning from YouTube I almost don't want to teach you because what you learn from YouTube it takes 10 times as long to unlearn.' They do an approximation of the centre of the note, an approximation of the interpretation, a cloned version. ~ Kiri Te Kanawa

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

Existing in this era comes with many contradictions. Contradictions because we have so much to unlearn. ~ Malebo Sephodi

As you can see, there are quite a number of things taught in school that one has to unlearn or at least correct. ~ Ambeth R. Ocampo

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

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

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

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

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

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

For my part, I should be inclined to suggest that the chief object of education should be to restore simplicity. If you like to put it so, the chief object of education is not to learn things; nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn things. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

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

Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God. Close your eyes and breathe your way beneath your troubles, the way a diver slips to that depth of stillness that is always waiting beneath the churning of the waves. Now, consider two things you love doing, such as running, drawing, singing, bird-watching, gardening, or reading. Meditate on what it is in each of these that makes you feel alive. Hold what they have in common before you, and breathing slowly, feel the spot of grace these dear things mirror within you. ~ Mark Nepo

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

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

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

I shall unlearn feeling,
unlearn my gift. That is greater
and harder than what passes there for life. ~ Derek Walcott

I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance,
Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance
You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought. ~ Saul Williams

To Unlearn is as hard as to Learn ~ Aristotle.

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

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 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

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

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

To be knowledgeable, learn new things every day; to be wise, unlearn things that you learn with wit and love. ~ Debasish Mridha

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

It's not hard to create self-beliefs that produce a successful and happy life. The main job is to unlearn your limiting beliefs. ~ Maddy Malhotra

I SAY "SORRY" A LOT. When I am running late. When I am navigating the streets of New York. When I interrupt someone. I say, "Sorry, sorry, sorry," in one long stream. The sentence becomes "Sorrysorrysorry" and it's said really fast, as if even the act of apologizing is something to apologize for. But this doesn't mean I am a pushover. It doesn't mean I am afraid of conflict or don't know how to stand up for myself. I am getting to a place right in the middle where I feel good about exactly how much I apologize. It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for. It takes years to find your voice and seize your real estate. I am still learning the right balance. ~ Amy Poehler

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

Unlearn the mediocrity and fitting in, you were never meant to fit in. ~ Mridula Singh

In my family, you can rot to hell on the inside as long as you're flawless on the outside, which is really sick, but also hard to unlearn. ~ Laura Wiess

The highest purpose of education is to unlearn what we once took for granted, to replace certainty with subtlety, prejudice with compassion, and destiny with possibility. ~ Neel Burton

We should teach our children nothing which they shall ever need to unlearn; we should strive to transmit to them the best possessions, the truest thought, the noblest sentiments of the age in which we live. ~ Felix Adler

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

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

Spirituality is about life long learning, unlearning and relearning ~ Sanchita Pandey

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

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

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

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

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