quotations about knowledge
In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good.
PLATO
Lysis
Learned men fall into error oftenest by mistaking knowledge for wisdom.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
Few can tell what they know without also showing what they do not know.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
I tried to think of my knowledge, but it was a squirrel's heap of winter nuts. There was no strength in my knowledge any more and I felt small and naked as a new-hatched bird.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
"By the Waters of Babylon"
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
Knowledge is a mimic creation.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Powershift
Knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS
Pantagruel
The true method of knowledge is experiment.
WILLIAM BLAKE
All Religions are One
Ultimately you want to have the entire world's knowledge connected directly to your mind.
SERGEY BRIN
Playboy, Sep. 2004
Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
Knowledge ... shall always bear witness like a clarion to its creator.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
What we know is to what we do not know, as a grain of sand is to the beach.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
By enlarging your knowledge of things, you will find your knowledge of self is enlarged.
CHARLES DE LINT
"The Pochade Box", The Ivory and the Horn
Information is the mortar that both builds and destroys empires.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
Man is an ignoramus athirst for knowledge.
CHARLES WAGNER
Justice
Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.
MARTIN AMIS
Money: A Suicide Note
The knowledge of useful things is a purse seldom lost.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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