KNOWLEDGE QUOTES VII

quotations about knowledge

It's a hard talk for a man to say I don't know; it hurts his pride: but should not the pretending he does, hurt it much more?

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims


Let no one, then, seek to know from me what I know that I do not know; unless he perhaps wishes to learn to be ignorant of that of which all we know is, that it cannot be known.

ST. AUGUSTINE

The City of God

Tags: St. Augustine


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

FRANK HERBERT

God Emperor of Dune


As I came not into life with any knowledge of it, and as my likings are for what is old, I busy myself in seeking knowledge there.

CONFUCIUS

The Wisdom of Confucius


Knowledge grows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn, and the faster we expand our knowledge base.

DAN BROWN

The Lost Symbol


Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

WILLIAM COWPER

The Task


Knowledge of the world depends on the power of drawing general inferences from individual examples; and he is the most likely to be correct who has the greatest number of facts at his command.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY

The Maxims


The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

STEPHEN HAWKING

attributed, The Prism and the Rainbow


The world grows more enlightened. Knowledge is more equally diffused.

JOHN ADAMS

Discourses on Davila


Knowledge often cuts the root that supports it.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

JOHN LOCKE

Some Thoughts Concerning Education


The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one's own knowledge is not to overstep them.

GIACOMO LEOPARDI

Leopardi: Poems and Prose


The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.

BERTOLT BRECHT

Life of Galileo


A man who is ready to converse but has nothing to say worth hearing, is a well without water; he that is rich in knowledge but reserved is a well without a bucket.

JOHN THORNTON

Maxims and Directions for Youth


Folks don't like to have somebody around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates 'em.

HARPER LEE

To Kill a Mockingbird


If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend.

BALTASAR GRACIAN

The Art of Worldly Wisdom


Is not the fraction which you know, in relation to their totality, what a single number is to infinity?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: Honoré de Balzac


Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

speech to Congress, Jan. 8, 1790


Knowledge, among diverse conditions, has these two--that what we know of anything will depend--first, on our size relative to it, and, secondly, on our distance from it. For if we are too far away, we shall not see it at all; and if too near, we shall be entangled in its parts, not seeing it in unity; while if in mind or body we be not large enough to couple with the object, our best understanding will be but piecemeal knowledge, take a mite whose feet tickle our finger; to the insect we must appear as to our body very differently from the manner in which we must see the creature. In like manner, we perceive a great mountain, which is unknown to the squirrel sporting on it, and more hid still from the cicada nibbling a leaf in the forest on it. A ball hurled from a gun across our vision and close to us, at a thousand miles an hour we cannot see; but we see the moon well, though its speed is more than two thousand miles an hour. By reason of the distance, the moon seems even not to move at all; and if we were not large enough in mind to study the moon, how could we know its motion, or how think of it except as done in leaps, since we could not observe the transition? If we were not much larger creatures in Nature's eye--which judges always according to power of thought--than a basin of water, we might be amazed to find it warm to one hand and cold to the other (as Berkeley has set forth), and led, perhaps, to fantastic dreams of two natures in one--as many as ever amused a medieval Aristotelian. These instances--and many more, easily multiplied--will show how distance and relative size affect knowledge, which I shall take as allowed.

JAMES VILA BLAKE

"Of Knowledge", Essays


Seek knowledge from the purest source.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims