Because man is a social animal, he is hamstrung when he does not engage in society with other men. Even with the greatest library in the world, you will never reach your full potential unless you interact with others, work together, share ideas and engage in discourse with your fellow man.
Learning is something that is best done in concert with others. This can be a formalized program of collective study or it can be the simple act of sharing what you have read, learned and thought about with others whom you respect and whose ideas and input you value. This is why it is so important to choose those we associate with carefully — they can be a launching pad or a boat anchor.
To share ideas and interact with others is not only to enrich ourselves. It is to make the world a better place for everyone in it.
Along this path it is important to appreciate those who are helping us to both improve ourselves but also to improve the world around us. Gratitude isn’t just for the things we have. It is also for the people in our lives who make us who we are.
The following are some of our favorite quotes on the topic of social intercourse and appreciation of our fellow man.
Quotes About Learning From Others
“And no one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself.”
“A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.”
“You should never try to be better than someone else, you should always be learning from others. But you should never cease trying to be the best you could be because that’s under your control and the other isn’t.”
“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.”
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.”
“A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.”
“Now, there are two different attitudes towards learning from others. One is the dogmatic attitude of transplanting everything, whether or not it is suited to our conditions. This is no good. The other attitude is to use our heads and learn those things that suit our conditions, that is, to absorb whatever experience is useful to us. That is the attitude we should adopt.”
Quotes About Appreciation and Showing Appreciation to Others
“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”
“What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things.”
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
“I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.”
“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”