quotations about knowledge
The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
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
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
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
Ultimately you want to have the entire world's knowledge connected directly to your mind.
SERGEY BRIN
Playboy, Sep. 2004
Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
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
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
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
Knowledge is a tool, and like all tools, its impact is in the hands of the user.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
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
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
Is not the fraction which you know, in relation to their totality, what a single number is to infinity?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
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
Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise -- even in their own field.
ISAAC ASIMOV
The Roving Mind
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
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.
T. S. ELIOT
The Rock
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
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
STEPHEN HAWKING
attributed, The Prism and the Rainbow
The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one's own knowledge is not to overstep them.
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
Leopardi: Poems and Prose