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
Practically all knowledge resolves itself into four forms: the knowledge of what to do, how to do, and when to do, and of what not to do.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Knowledge gropes but meets not Wisdom's face.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
A man may do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found out in mixed company; everybody is so much more ready to produce his own than to call for a display of your acquisition.
CHARLES LAMB
"The Old and the New Schoolmaster", Elia and the Last Essays of Elia
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
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
Knowledge is a mimic creation.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
The world grows more enlightened. Knowledge is more equally diffused.
JOHN ADAMS
Discourses on Davila
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
Knowledge is the treasure, but judgment the treasurer of a wise man. He that has more knowledge than judgment, is made for another man's use more than his own.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Soli
Although humans have existed on this planet for perhaps 2 million years, the rapid climb to modern civilization within the last 200 years was possible due to the fact that the growth of scientific knowledge is exponential; that is, its rate of expansion is proportional to how much is already known. The more we know, the faster we can know more. For example, we have amassed more knowledge since World War II than all the knowledge amassed in our 2-million-year evolution on this planet. In fact, the amount of knowledge that our scientists gain doubles approximately every 10 to 20 years.
MICHIO KAKU
Hyperspace
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
Humans crave knowledge, and when that craving ends, we are no longer human.
TIM LEBBON
Fallen
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
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 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
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
Knowledge acquired too rapidly and without being personally supplemented is never very productive.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
The Reflections of Lichtenberg
All I want is to know things. The black gulph of the infinite is before me ...
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Frank Belknap, February 27, 1931
Is not the fraction which you know, in relation to their totality, what a single number is to infinity?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita