Quote - Wise Thoughts

Over the weekend, a family member was expressing a thought which had apparently just recently come to him. As with all such "discoveries" the family member was telling me with an enthusiasm suggesting he had uncovered something I didn't know, or hadn't considered before. I thought immediately of this quote.

All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832)

We all learn things. Some we learn before others; some after. Who learned it first is not important- after all, exceedingly few of us learn something for the first time in humanity's existence. The important thing is that we learn -- whether wisdom or knowledge -- and that we keep learning.