There are many things which we can afford to forget which it is yet well to learn.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.Read
The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts, but learning how to make facts live.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Education is more about how to think and understand than simply memorizing facts.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. emphasizes that true intellectual education goes beyond the mere collection of information. It involves understanding the significance of facts and engaging with them in a way that brings them to life, fostering critical thinking and deeper comprehension.
Themes
EducationIntellectualLearningFactsUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of engaging teaching methods in schools.
More from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
All quotes βOn the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.
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If you don't know what you want, you will probably never get it.
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Why should you row a boat race? Why endure the long months of pain in preparation for a fierce half hour that will leave you all but dead? Does anyone ask the question? Is there anyone who would not go through all the costs, and more, for the moment when anguish breaks into triumph or even for the glory of having nobly lost? Is life less than a boat race? If a man will give the blood in his body to win the one, will he spend all the might of his soul to prevail in the other?
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Beware how you take away hope from another human being.
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If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.Read
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