'The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.'

'Don't gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.'

-Reggae pioneer Bob Marley (1945-1981)

'You will never feel proud of your work if you find no joy within it; your best work is always joyful work.'

- Stevie Wonder (1950-present)

'You don't get to choose how you're going to die or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.'

- Musician and activist Joan Baez (1941-present)

'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.'

- Author James Baldwin (1924–1987)

'Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.'

- US President James Madison (1751-1836)

'In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.'

-Poet Robert Frost (1874-1963)

'It's those who lie outside ordinary experience who have the most to teach us.'

- Author Malcolm Gladwell (1963 - present)

'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.'

- Albert Einstein

'All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.'

- Musician George Harrison (1943–2001)

'Don’t try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them.'

- Actress Betty White (1922-2021)

'In my experience, each failure contains the seeds of your next success—if you are willing to learn from it.'

- Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen (1953–2018)

A quote by Whitney Houston

"I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside."

'(Kids) don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.'

- "Muppets" creator Jim Henson (1936-1990)

'Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy ... That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

-Harper Lee (1926-2016) in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

'Voices ought not be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth.'

- Iconic singer Sam Cooke (1931–1964)

Béla Fleck took the banjo from Appalachian porches to African villages and Carnegie Hall

In a conversation recorded at a Philadelphia instrument shop, Fleck reflects on how an instrument associated with a single American folk tradition became his vehicle for bluegrass, jazz, classical, African folk, and orchestral music. He has long advocated that every living room should have a banjo, and he highlights how he has integrated the instrument across genres in this fascinating discussion.

'When you come to a fork in the road, take it.'

- Baseball great Yogi Berra (1925-2015)

'This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook—try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all have fun.'

- Chef Julia Child (1912-2004)

Stephen King doesn't believe writing can be taught

But he does believe it can be learned. He argues that the best writers are "voracious readers" who start their careers by copying the style of the masters before developing their own.

'Reputation is what others think about you. What’s far more important is character, because that is what you think about yourself.'

- Tennis champion Billie Jean King (1943-present)

'Adults ask questions as a child does. When you stop wondering, you might as well put your rocker on the front porch and call it a day.'

- Comedian and late night host Johnny Carson (1925–2005)

'Because of phones, we always have the ability to jump out of ourselves. But unless you learn how to be in your head, you’ll never learn how to create.'

- Songwriter and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980-present)

Bob Dylan, explained

Bob Dylan has never had a Billboard No. 1 hit—but his influence on music is unmatched. This overview looks at his early protest songs, his shift to electric rock, and the cultural impact of his lyrics, performances, and legacy across generations.

'The bounty of nature is also one of the deep needs of man.'

- Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007)

Playing music enhances the creation, storage, and retrieval of memories

Scans of the brains of individuals who play instruments have shown enhanced connectivity between multiple brain regions—visual, auditory, and motor cortices—and the corpus callosum, which connects the two brain hemispheres. These complex connections are strengthened through practice and then used in other activities that involve both logic and creativity. The brains of musicians also appear to give experiences multiple types of memory tags, such as audio, emotional, and conceptual, improving their processing.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Ebola species have historically been named after where they were discovered, stigmatizing residents who live there, including Bundibugyo, in Uganda.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.