quotations about knowledge
Folks don't like to have somebody around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates 'em.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Emile
Knowledge gropes but meets not Wisdom's face.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
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
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
Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
As I came not into life with any knowledge of it, and as my likings are for what is old, I busy myself in seeking knowledge there.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
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
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
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
How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in truth!
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus Rex
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
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.
T. S. ELIOT
The Rock
All knowledge hurts.
CASSANDRA CLARE
City of Bones
The world grows more enlightened. Knowledge is more equally diffused.
JOHN ADAMS
Discourses on Davila
The less we know, the longer the explanation.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
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