quotations about knowledge
All men by nature desire to know.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend.
BALTASAR GRACIAN
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.
MARGARET FULLER
Woman's Day Magazine, Sep. 12, 2007
Knowledge is twofold and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of what is false.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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
Man is an ignoramus athirst for knowledge.
CHARLES WAGNER
Justice
The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
All the King's Men
The further knowledge advances, the nearer we come to the unfathomable.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The knowledge of man is as the waters, some descending from above, and some springing from beneath: the one informed by the light of nature, the other inspired by divine revelation.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.
CARL SAGAN
Cosmos
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
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
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
The most that any of us know, is the least of that which is to be known.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
A youth's knowledge is like a cheap shotgun--likely to do as much damage to the owner as to the game.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
For knowing is spoken of in three ways: it may be either universal knowledge or knowledge proper to the matter in hand or actualising such knowledge; consequently three kinds of error also are possible.
ARISTOTLE
Prior Analytics
Is knowledge the pearl of price? That, too, may be purchased -- by steady application, and long solitary hours of study and reflection. Bestow these, and you shall be wise.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.
JOHN KEATS
Hyperion
Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge at all. because if you're guessing and it doesn't work out you can just say, shit, the gods are against me. but if you know and don't do, you've got attics and dark halls in your mind to walk up and down in and wonder about. this ain't healthy, leads to unpleasant evenings, too much to drink and the shredding machine.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.
ALAN MOORE
V for Vendetta