KNOWLEDGE QUOTES IV

quotations about knowledge

This desire of knowledge and the wonder which it hopes to satisfy are the driving power behind all the changes that we, with careless, question-begging inference, call progress.

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

lecture at Columbia University, Mar. 4, 1908


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


I should not like to say ... that any kind of knowledge is not to be learned; for all knowledge appears to be a good.

PLATO

Laches


The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Sputnik Sweetheart


Drugs or overeating or alcohol or sex, it was all just another way to find peace. To escape what we know. Our education. Our bite of the apple.

CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Choke


I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole.

MIKHAIL BAKUNIN

God and the State

Tags: Mikhail Bakunin


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


Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims


What we know is to what we do not know, as a grain of sand is to the beach.

IVAN PANIN

Thoughts


Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise -- even in their own field.

ISAAC ASIMOV

The Roving Mind


All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Thoughts on Art and Life


Ultimately you want to have the entire world's knowledge connected directly to your mind.

SERGEY BRIN

Playboy, Sep. 2004


Knowledge is a tool, and like all tools, its impact is in the hands of the user.

DAN BROWN

The Lost Symbol


To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is ... the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind. It prolongs life itself and enlarges the sphere of existence.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

report on the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution, 1846


Seek knowledge from the purest source.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know, and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon


Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

speech to Congress, Jan. 8, 1790


Men have hunger, sleep, fear and carnal intercourse in common with the lower animals. It is only knowledge that a man has more than they. Those men who have not it may be regarded as beasts.

CHANAKYA

Vridda-Chanakya


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"