One of the great tragedies (I’m using that word deliberately) is when someone imagines that an educational degree is the end of learning.

It’s not the end: it’s the beginning.

A true education teaches you how to learn, in hopes that you’ll spend the rest of your life – however long or short – in learning about the endless mysteries and beauty and majesty that faces us in this life

Of course, it’s not necessary to have a college (or otherwise) education. Someone who spends even 15 minutes a day reading important books will aquire multiple lifetimes of degrees over the course of their life. But a degree can sometimes be a jump start.

But it has to be looked at that way: as the most rudimentary beginnings, where you learn where to learn and how to learn.

Those who are handed a diploma and never think or read seriously or question again are probably worse off than someone who never learned anything.

Even worse off are those who hold a diploma to their chest as a kind of learning talisman, viewing that diploma as a sign that the holder is Educated.

Those who imagine that they have somehow arrived in knowledge about the world and the very big things of life are the most ignorant. The one who instead sees himself as looking into a vast portal of knowledge and knows that while he will never master that knowledge, he will keep on learning and questioning and asking – that is the man who despite his profound ignorance, is truly wise.