quotations about knowledge
All men by nature desire to know.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
There's so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
Knowledge grows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn, and the faster we expand our knowledge base.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
It does not make much difference what a person studies--all knowledge is related, and the man who studies anything, if he keeps at it, will be learned.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
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
We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
We just do not see how very specialized the use of "I know" is.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty
The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.
BERTOLT BRECHT
Life of Galileo
The most that any of us know, is the least of that which is to be known.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
The misapplication of our knowledge is, in general, more injurious to our happiness and interest, than either the privations of ignorance, or the disqualifications of inexperience.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Knowledge shuts a man's mouth.
ERWIN SYLVANUS
Dr. Korczak and the Children
It is the mystery which lies all around the little we know which makes life so unspeakably interesting. I am thankful that that which I do not know, is so immeasurably greater than that which I know. I am thankful that I am only at the beginning of things.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
If there's anything worse than knowing too little, it's knowing too much. Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there's no known cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
All I want is to know things. The black gulph of the infinite is before me ...
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Frank Belknap, February 27, 1931
A youth's knowledge is like a cheap shotgun--likely to do as much damage to the owner as to the game.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
A man may do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found out in mixed company; everybody is so much more ready to produce his own than to call for a display of your acquisition.
CHARLES LAMB
"The Old and the New Schoolmaster", Elia and the Last Essays of Elia
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
There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink: the one you purchase of the wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them away in other vessels, and before you receive them into the body as food, you may deposit them at home and call in any experienced friend who knows what is good to be eaten or drunken, and what not, and how much, and when; and hence the danger of purchasing them is not so great. But when you buy the wares of knowledge you cannot carry them away in another vessel; they have been sold to you, and you must take them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefited by the lesson.
PLATO
Protagoras
The true method of knowledge is experiment.
WILLIAM BLAKE
All Religions are One