9 quotes
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
A man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty.
No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
He that knows anything, knows this, in the first place, that he need not seek long for instances of his ignorance."
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it, into which a young gentleman should be enter'd by degrees, as he can bear it; and the earlier the better, so he be in safe and skillful hands to guide him.
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
The improvement of the understanding is for two ends: first, for our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver and make out that knowledge to others.
Sophistry is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance.
Mark what 'tis his mind aims at in the question, and not what words he expresses it in: and when you have informed and satisfied him in that, you shall see how his thoughts will enlarge themselves, and how by fit answers he may be led on farther than perhaps you could have imagine. For knowledge is grateful to the understanding, as light to the eyes.
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)