Overcoming our educational weaknesses

Too often we dwell in the comfort of our educational strengths and avoid overcoming our educational weaknesses. Thus our greatest strengths can become our greatest weaknesses. We may dwell in the security of the past, unwilling to venture into the future because of the fear of ignorance or the lack of knowledge about a subject we desire to study or to research. We need the courage to take a long step of faith into a fearful darkness, not knowing how deep the educational cave is that we are about to enter.

Lifelong learners acquire an inordinate degree of patience in their quest for learning. They understand through their diligent search for learning that it takes a great deal of energy and a great deal of time to find pure knowledge.

Robert D. Hales, “The Journey of Lifelong Learning,” BYU Devotional, August 19, 2008

Becoming perfect means changing often

. . . to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.

John Henry Newman, “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine” (1845), Chapter 1, Section 1, Part 7.

Being consistently focused on what we want to become

We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day.

Richard G. Scott, “The Transforming Power of Faith and Character,” October 2010 General Conference

“Think that ye may be mistaken”

“I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken.” I should like to have that written over the portals of every church, every school, and every courthouse, and, may I say, of every legislative body in the United States. I should like to have every court begin, “I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, I think we may be mistaken.”

Learned Hand, “Morals in Public Life” (1951)

(Hand was a Judge of United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1924-1961. Here he is quoting a famous expression of Oliver Cromwell in a letter of August 1650 to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland.)