There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child, than from the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed, and the prejudices of their education. (John Locke)

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. (Doctor Johnson)

There is hardly a single action we perform in [adolescence] which we would not give anything, in later life, to be able to annul. Whereas what we ought to regret is that we no longer possess the spontaneity which made us perform them. In later life we look at things in a more practical way, in full conformity with the rest of society, but adolescence is the only period in which we learn anything. (Marcel Proust)

The spontaneous wish to learn, which every normal child possesses, as shown in its efforts to walk and talk, should be the driving force in education. (Bertrand Russell)