"Learning is its own exceeding great reward"
About this Quote
A gente that lived by his pen, Hazlitt treats education less like self-improvement and more like a private form of riches: the kind you can’t have confiscated, inflated, or voted away. “Learning is its own exceeding great reward” is pointedly anti-transactional. He’s pushing back on the idea that knowledge needs an external payoff to justify the effort. The phrasing matters: “its own” slams the door on utilitarian accounting, while “exceeding great” carries the faintly theatrical emphasis of someone insisting, a little impatiently, that you’re missing the point.
The subtext is also defensive. Hazlitt wrote in a Britain where class gatekeeping and institutional prestige shaped who got to be “educated,” and where the early industrial age was already training minds toward productivity. By casting learning as a reward in itself, he smuggles in a democratic claim: you don’t need permission, credentials, or a salary bump to make the pursuit worthwhile. The pleasure is internal, portable, and self-authenticating.
There’s a sly moral edge, too. Hazlitt isn’t just praising curiosity; he’s indicting the bargain-hunters who want knowledge to arrive pre-monetized. His line anticipates our current “ROI of everything” culture, where reading gets justified as networking, and thinking gets sold as branding. Hazlitt’s counteroffer is bracing: the payoff of learning is not what it buys you, but what it does to you - widening the mind, sharpening taste, and making the world feel less like a closed room.
The subtext is also defensive. Hazlitt wrote in a Britain where class gatekeeping and institutional prestige shaped who got to be “educated,” and where the early industrial age was already training minds toward productivity. By casting learning as a reward in itself, he smuggles in a democratic claim: you don’t need permission, credentials, or a salary bump to make the pursuit worthwhile. The pleasure is internal, portable, and self-authenticating.
There’s a sly moral edge, too. Hazlitt isn’t just praising curiosity; he’s indicting the bargain-hunters who want knowledge to arrive pre-monetized. His line anticipates our current “ROI of everything” culture, where reading gets justified as networking, and thinking gets sold as branding. Hazlitt’s counteroffer is bracing: the payoff of learning is not what it buys you, but what it does to you - widening the mind, sharpening taste, and making the world feel less like a closed room.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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