KNOWLEDGE QUOTES VI

quotations about knowledge

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

WILLIAM BLAKE

All Religions are One


Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims


I do not approve the maxim which desires a man to know a little of everything. Superficial knowledge, knowledge without principles, is almost always useless and sometimes harmful knowledge.

LUC DE CLAPIERS

MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims


When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


It is as though each of us investigated and made his own only a tiny circle of facts. Knowledge outside the day's work is regarded by most men as gewgaw. Still we are constantly in reaction against our ignorance. We rouse ourselves at intervals and speculate.

ROBERT WILSON LYND

The Pleasure of Ignorance


Information is the mortar that both builds and destroys empires.

TOBSHA LEARNER

The Witch of Cologne


Few can tell what they know without also showing what they do not know.

IVAN PANIN

Thoughts


Knowledge gropes but meets not Wisdom's face.

SRI AUROBINDO

Gems from Sri Aurobindo


Man is an ignoramus athirst for knowledge.

CHARLES WAGNER

Justice


Those who have knowledge are more confident than those who have no knowledge, and they are more confident after they have learned than before.

PLATO

Protagoras


I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding, they learn by some other way -- by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

RICHARD FEYNMAN

Surely You're Joking


We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers… one saying to the other: "you don't know what you are talking about!". The second one says: "what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?"

RICHARD FEYNMAN

The Feynman Lectures on Physics


If you are truly wise, you will conceal your knowledge from the world, and let every fool think himself your superior, especially if you have anything to gain by him; for envy is the strongest passion of the weak, and mediocrity is the hot-bed on which all the meaner passions flourish.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY

The Maxims


The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


Yet with great toil all that I can attain
By long experience, and in learned schools,
Is for to know my knowledge is but vain,
And those that think them wise, are greatest fools.

SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER

EARL OF STIRLING, The Tragedy of Croesus


It is the mystery which lies all around the little we know which makes life so unspeakably interesting. I am thankful that that which I do not know, is so immeasurably greater than that which I know. I am thankful that I am only at the beginning of things.

REUEN THOMAS

Thoughts for the Thoughtful


All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Thoughts on Art and Life


How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.

MARY SHELLEY

Frankenstein


That is the beginning of knowledge--the discovery of something we do not understand.

FRANK HERBERT

God Emperor of Dune


If there's anything worse than knowing too little, it's knowing too much. Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there's no known cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust.

GEORGE HORACE LORIMER

Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son