Learning Quotes

WHO IS LEARNED? A definition One who, consuming midnight oilin studies diligent and slow,teaches himself, with painful toil,the things that other people know.

~ Piet Hein

We seek to understand Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to understand ourselves. We have different explicit goals, from getting in shape, learning self-defense or competition, but tacitly we all seek mastery of ourselves.

~ Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu is meant to serve us, not the other way around. It is meant to make you more of whatever it is you already are. It is meant to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is meant to bring to conscious attention all that once went unseen. It is meant to make you more loving. It is meant to make you more wise, but less certain. It is meant to make us humble, yet supremely confident. It is meant to remind us of our frailty while simultaneously making us feel invincible.

~ Chris Matakas

If Jiu Jitsu does not make you a better father, son, mother, daughter, wife or husband, you are missing the point. If Jiu Jitsu does not leave you viewing strangers in a kinder light, you are missing the point. If you are not better equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of life due to your training, then you are not really training.

~ Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu has shown me that we are not confined to the lot which we inherit. We are not bound to these fetters eternally. They are temporal. We can transcend them should we sincerely choose to. Sincere effort is in fact the rarest virtue among man.

~ Chris Matakas

I wanted to get to the most essential aspect of my being, and look around for a while. I wanted to explore what I am in my most basic self. I wanted to chip away at all of the nonsense I have acquired through my twenty-nine years on this earth. I wanted to find truth. Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats. Jiu Jitsu has peeled the veil of daily life, and has shown me what lies beyond the curtain. We willingly accept the chains that circumstance forces upon us, and we grow to find comfort in them. We attach various fetters of day-to-day living to our being, and we do so with a smile. We accept these constraints for they come in the way of comfort. We accept conformity for it appears the path of least resistance. We strive toward the middle, and we run from ourselves.

~ Chris Matakas

Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats.

~ Chris Matakas

We call it training. Not because we are training for Jiu Jitsu. We are training for life.

~ Chris Matakas

I have seen far by seeing through the lens of Jiu Jitsu. I have exchanged a great deal of physical health for these insights, and these were trades worth making. My efforts were worth the return. I have sacrificed much in the name of this craft. Not for trophies or belts or prestige. For these fall away like dust. I pursued this art so fervently because it was not actually Jiu Jitsu I pursued. It was myself.

~ Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu can be a source of total transparency such as a mirror, but it takes a conscious choice to see what it has to say.

~ Chris Matakas

Moral maturity and freedom require more than mere adherence to the law, they require an understanding of the why and wherefore of its rules and regulations- the principles that make it worthy of their allegiance.

~ Karen Bohlin

There was never a tutor that did professly teach Felicity, though that be the mistress of all other sciences. Nor did any of us study these things but as aliena, which we ought to have studied as our enjoyments. We studied to inform our knowledge, but knew not for what end we so studied. And for lack of aiming at a certain end we erred in the manner. Howbeit there we received all those seeds of knowledge that were afterwards improved; and our souls were awakened to a discerning of their faculties, and exercise of their powers.

~ Thomas Traherne

It is a mistake to tell students that their classroom is a democracy- it cannot and never will be. But children need to learn how to participate in a community and to prepare themselves for democratic citizenship.

~ Karen Bohlin

...there is a danger of churning out students who are rapid processors of information but may not necessarily be more reflective, thoughtful, and able to give sustained consideration to the information that matters most.

~ Karen Bohlin

I'm not as interested in dispensing knowledge on how to make a living ass I am in helping young people learn how to make a life...

~ D. Bruce Lockerbie

Do not seek victory, for victory in itself will not serve you. Seek to understand what made the victory possible.

~ Chris Matakas

An arm bar in a vacuum is worthless. It is the realization of the truths which constitute that arm bar that is the real treasure we seek.

~ Chris Matakas

When we learn of Him, we see the things that we do wrong, we see what things need to be corrected in our way of thinking and our way of living.

~ Sunday Adelaja

The infinitude of Jiu Jitsu allows for the infinitude of the types of practitioners. There exists a game for each and every one of us which is specifically possible within the confines of our particular skill set.

~ Chris Matakas

We must keep on learning for self-development.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

As for those who spite you, and seemingly just because, it's only evident that they're learning from you. Maybe you taste bad - kind of like medicine, kind of like truth - and to them, you're thought unsafe. There is flattery in being chewed out and spit up. Humans have always had a hard time digesting foreign things.

~ Criss Jami

A wealth of knowledge is openly accessible in nature. Our ancestors knew this and embraced the natural cures found in the bosoms of the earth. Their classroom was nature. They studied the lessons to be learned from animals, knowing that much of human behavior can be explained by watching the wild beasts around us. Animals are constantly teaching us things about ourselves and the way of the universe, but most people are too blind to watch and listen.

~ Suzy Kassem

Don't ever get to the point where you can't be taught because life is a classroom and everyone owns a pen.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Keep up with what's causing chaos in your own field.

~ John Waters

Discipline is a bridge built through everyday action.

~ J.r. Rim

Success is a process of learning, growth, progression and faithfulness.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Bill arrives with a grin about something. Sure, he's got some jets for my machine and knows right were they are. I'll have to wait a second though. He's got to close a deal out in back on some Harley parts. I go with him out in a shed in back and see he is selling a whole Harley machine in used parts, except for the frame, which the customer already has. He is selling them all for $125. Not a bad price at all.Coming back I comment, He'll know something about motorcycles before he gets those together.Bill laughs. And that's the best way to learn, too.

~ Robert M. Pirsig

From birth to death we explore and seek, and in the end we arrive where we started, the past having made one great slow turn on a carousel to become our future, and if we have learned anything worth learning, the carousel will bring us to the one place we most need to be.

~ Dean Koontz

For the sincere student, it mustn't be enough to simply understand Jiu Jitsu. We must seek to understand ourselves.

~ Chris Matakas

If you keep doing it everyday as regularly as soldiers go through drill, we shall see what will happend and find out if the experiment succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in your mind for ever, and I think it will be the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you, it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things.

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

The longer you pause to process surprising or negative feedback, the more likely you are to learn from it.

~ Susan Cain

Failure is a natural part of learning and developing, and it teaches us to be resolute and steadfast in our endeavors.

~ Henry Kimsey-House

Learning is the heart of discipleship. You can't just take up your cross daily. You need to take up the Bible every day.

~ Mark Batterson

The greatest fulfillment, personal development.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Don't stop learning. A time will come when your dreams will go global and you will turn and laugh at how local you've been. Start local anyway!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Acquiring of wisdom is a function of inquisitiveness for information and keenness for learning. Plenty of resource and the gravity of flow will ensure a momentum good enough for learning.

~ Priyavrat Thareja

Idle hands are the devils greatest tools. But it’ll be good to notice that the tools sharpened by idle heads. You are idle because that’s the job your mind gave you!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Teaching is different today. Teachers don’t just stand at the board and lecture while the kids take notes. What we’re ultimately teaching them is to teach themselves.

~ Tony Danza

Just open your eyes! I thought. These desperate poor are your gurus.

~ Martin Sheen

Every day is filled with spectacular moments. Seek them!

~ Lailah Gifty Akita