Much learning does not teach understanding

1. Much learning does not teach understanding.

-Heraclitus (540 BC - 480 BC), On the Universe

2. I have always found the name of a person's Alma mater to be a better indicator of their ego than their intelligence.
 
3. I think Mark Twain was in agreement when he said, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."  

4. Sir Ken Robinson certainly is, as he demonstrates in this video on how our flawed education system is a product of industrial age thinking. 

5. Socrates said, "I know that I know nothing."
(more precisely: This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe [that I know anything].)

6. TS Eliot was probably thinking of that when he wrote, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

7.  Henry Rollins points to experience as key to true knowledge when he says, "You can sit in school all your life, which is cool to do for some years, but then you gotta take that knowledge and go out. Knowledge without mileage = bullshit to me.  So you have to take what you know and then go out into what Mark Twain called 'the territory' and break your nose on it."

8.  Thomas Sowell brings us back to Heraclitus when he defines the difference between intellect, intelligence, and wisdom:

"The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect, but not enough to encompass intelligence, which involves combining intellect with judgment and care in selecting relevant explanatory factors and in establishing empirical tests of any theory that emerges. Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect.  
Wisdom is the rarest quality of all - the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce a coherent understanding.  Wisdom is the fulfillment of the ancient admonition, 'With all your getting, get understanding. Wisdom requires self-discipline and an understanding of the realities of the world, including the limitations of one's own experience and of reason itself.  The opposite of intellect is dullness or slowness, but the opposite of wisdom is foolishness, which is far more dangerous."

9. Aristotle identified that man alone is a rational animal.  This ability to reason is what sets us apart from all the other animals.  As such, if we do not use this ability, if we do not practice it, refine it, strengthen it, feed it, then we are in essence, no better than animals.

10. Which is probably why Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living.