We know that once we stop learning and call ourselves learned, we become useless members of the scientific society.
Interpretation
Continuous learning is essential to remain valuable in society.
This quote by Christian De Duve emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning. It suggests that when individuals cease to pursue knowledge and consider themselves fully 'learned,' they risk becoming obsolete and unproductive members of a community, especially in the fast-evolving field of science. The pursuit of knowledge is portrayed as a vital aspect of contributing to society and staying relevant.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of education, one could quote this to highlight the need for continuous learning.
If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe.
The mind of a child is no less vagrant than his steps; it pursues the gossamer and flies from object to object, lawless and unconfined, and it is equally necessary to the development of his frame that his thoughts and his body should be free from fetters.
For every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresh education, and there is no stage for which so little educational preparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period.
Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment.
When I think how art education is eliminated whenever we get a budget crunch in the schools, I have to stand up and say that even when there was dire poverty ten blocks away from Tiffany Studios in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there was art and creativity within.
There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe.
If you invest in a girl or a woman, you are investing in everybody else.
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