Diligent as one must be in learning, one must be as diligent in forgetting; otherwise the process is one of pedantry, not culture.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Concerning culture as a process, one would say that it means learning a great many things and then forgetting them; and the forgetting is as necessary as the learning.
Perhaps the prevalence of pedantry may be largely accounted for by the common error of thinking that, because useful knowledge should be remembered, any kind of knowledge that is at all worth learning should be remembered too.
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
The process of learning requires not only hearing and applying but also forgetting and then remembering again.
We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
In the matter of learning, the difference between the earnest and the careless student stands out clearly. The same holds true in the mastering of passion and the weaknesses to which our nature is subject, as in the acquiring of virtue.
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence.
Learning gives us a fuller conviction of the imperfections of our nature; which one would think, might dispose us to modesty.
Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
Learning has always been made much of, but forgetting has always been deprecated; therefore pedantry has pretty well established itself throughout the modern world at the expense of culture.