quotations about knowledge
Knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS
Pantagruel
Knowledge often cuts the root that supports it.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
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
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
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.
T. S. ELIOT
The Rock
Those who have knowledge are more confident than those who have no knowledge, and they are more confident after they have learned than before.
PLATO
Protagoras
The world grows more enlightened. Knowledge is more equally diffused.
JOHN ADAMS
Discourses on Davila
Few can tell what they know without also showing what they do not know.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Knowledge is a mimic creation.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
The knowledge of useful things is a purse seldom lost.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
What we know is built on what we do not know.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Seek knowledge from the purest source.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Man is an ignoramus athirst for knowledge.
CHARLES WAGNER
Justice
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
All knowledge hurts.
CASSANDRA CLARE
City of Bones
Knowledge is power. Power to do evil ... or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.
VERONICA ROTH
Allegiant
Yet with great toil all that I can attain
By long experience, and in learned schools,
Is for to know my knowledge is but vain,
And those that think them wise, are greatest fools.
SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER
EARL OF STIRLING, The Tragedy of Croesus
We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers… one saying to the other: "you don't know what you are talking about!". The second one says: "what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?"
RICHARD FEYNMAN
The Feynman Lectures on Physics