"The acquisition and retention of knowledge is the product of an active, integrative, interactional process between instructional material and relevant ideas in the learner's cognitive structure." - David Ausubel in The Acquisition and Retention of Knowledge: A Cognitive View
"One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to." - Elon Musk in I am Elon Musk, CEO/CTO of a rocket company, AMA!
"Rote learning tasks are relatable to cognitive structure only in an arbitrary, verbatim fashion that does not result in the acquisition of new meanings." - David Ausubel in The Acquisition and Retention of Knowledge: A Cognitive View
"Their arbitrary and verbatim relatability to cognitive structure makes rote learning tasks highly vulnerable to memory interference." - David Ausubel in The Acquisition and Retention of Knowledge: A Cognitive View