quotations about knowledge
Wonder is the desire of knowledge.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Summa Theologica
New knowledge leads always to yet more awesome mysteries.
STEPHEN KING
The Gunslinger
All our knowledge has its origin in our preceptions.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
RICHARD FEYNMAN
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
The tiny, initial clue ... by allowing us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge.
MARCEL PROUST
Swann's Way
Omniscience ... is an excellent quality in God, but suspect in everyone else.
JENNIFER LEE CARRELL
Interred With Their Bones
Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.
JOHN ADAMS
A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law
I ain't one of those who believe that a half knowledge of a subject is useless, but it has been my experience that when a fellow has that half knowledge he finds it's the other half which would really come in handy.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
On Science
If I don't know I don't know
I think I know
If I don't know I know
I think I don't know
R. D. LAING
Knots
When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
Information and knowledge: two currencies that have never gone out of style.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of all climates, and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
It has been observed that a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant will see farther than the giant himself; and the moderns, standing as they do on the vantage ground of former discoveries and uniting all the fruits of the experience of their forefathers, with their own actual observation, may be admitted to enjoy a more enlarged and comprehensive view of things than the ancients themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, July 18, 1713
Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
There is but a slight difference between the man who may be said to know nothing and him who thinks he knows everything.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain that an ignorant person thinks everything he does know important, and he tells it to everybody. But a well-educated man is not so ready to display his learning; he would have too much to say, and he sees that there is much more to be said, so he holds his peace.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Emile
Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of creation or in its deference to worldly masters.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Dialectic of Enlightenment