quotations about knowledge
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
Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than a little; and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Seek knowledge from the purest source.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Knowledge often cuts the root that supports it.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
In the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises, and even pastimes for children; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world’s culture delineated in faint outline.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
The Phenomenology of Spirit
Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
Information is the mortar that both builds and destroys empires.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
Knowledge is a mimic creation.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
What we know is to what we do not know, as a grain of sand is to the beach.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Folks don't like to have somebody around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates 'em.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
There is, perhaps, one universal truth about all forms of human cognition: the ability to deal with knowledge is hugely exceeded by the potential knowledge contained in man's environment. To cope with this diversity, man's perception, his memory, and his thought processes early become governed by strategies for protecting his limited capacities from the confusion of overloading. We tend to perceive things schematically, for example, rather than in detail, or we represent a class of diverse things by some sort of averaged "typical instance."
JEROME S. BRUNER
Art as a Mode of Knowing
The less we know, the longer the explanation.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
What we know is built on what we do not know.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
To receive instruction and knowledge is as natural as to receive the light of the sun, if a man opens his eyes.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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
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
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
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
STEPHEN HAWKING
attributed, The Prism and the Rainbow
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.
T. S. ELIOT
The Rock