quotations about knowledge
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
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
Knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS
Pantagruel
In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good.
PLATO
Lysis
Learned men fall into error oftenest by mistaking knowledge for wisdom.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Knowledge is a mimic creation.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Few can tell what they know without also showing what they do not know.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Powershift
Ultimately you want to have the entire world's knowledge connected directly to your mind.
SERGEY BRIN
Playboy, Sep. 2004
The true method of knowledge is experiment.
WILLIAM BLAKE
All Religions are One
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"
Knowledge ... shall always bear witness like a clarion to its creator.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
What we know is to what we do not know, as a grain of sand is to the beach.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
The knowledge of useful things is a purse seldom lost.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
Man is an ignoramus athirst for knowledge.
CHARLES WAGNER
Justice
Information is the mortar that both builds and destroys empires.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
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
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
Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on.
ANNE RICE
The Vampire Lestat