quotations about knowledge
There is but a slight difference between the man who may be said to know nothing and him who thinks he knows everything.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, July 18, 1713
This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power.
HERODOTUS
The Histories: Book 9
Knowledge is a tool, and like all tools, its impact is in the hands of the user.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
The further we advance in knowledge, the more simplicity shall we discover in those primary rules that regulate all the apparently endless, complicated, and multiform operations of the Godhead.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Sorrow is Knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.
LORD BYRON
Manfred
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
Practically all knowledge resolves itself into four forms: the knowledge of what to do, how to do, and when to do, and of what not to do.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS
Pantagruel
Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of all climates, and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Ultimately you want to have the entire world's knowledge connected directly to your mind.
SERGEY BRIN
Playboy, Sep. 2004
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
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
Learned men fall into error oftenest by mistaking knowledge for wisdom.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
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
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
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
Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims