quotations about knowledge
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
Knowledge is power. Power to do evil ... or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.
VERONICA ROTH
Allegiant
That is the beginning of knowledge--the discovery of something we do not understand.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
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
If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend.
BALTASAR GRACIAN
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Knowledge shuts a man's mouth.
ERWIN SYLVANUS
Dr. Korczak and the Children
You have to live to really know things.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
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
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
We just do not see how very specialized the use of "I know" is.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty
Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
speech to Congress, Jan. 8, 1790
Knowledge itself is power.
FRANCIS BACON
Meditations Sacrae
All men by nature desire to know.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
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
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Religion has treated knowledge sometimes as an enemy, sometimes as a hostage; often as a captive, and more often as a child: but knowledge has become of age; and religion must either renounce her acquaintance, or introduce her as a companion and respect her as a friend.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The misapplication of our knowledge is, in general, more injurious to our happiness and interest, than either the privations of ignorance, or the disqualifications of inexperience.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink: the one you purchase of the wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them away in other vessels, and before you receive them into the body as food, you may deposit them at home and call in any experienced friend who knows what is good to be eaten or drunken, and what not, and how much, and when; and hence the danger of purchasing them is not so great. But when you buy the wares of knowledge you cannot carry them away in another vessel; they have been sold to you, and you must take them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefited by the lesson.
PLATO
Protagoras