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A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
Their shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

— Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism (1711)

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Learning

More quotes by Alexander Pope

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear.

Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.

The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole
Can never be a mouse of any soul.

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

G. K. Chesterton

There is the love of knowing without the love of learning; the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind.

Confucius

Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alexander Pope (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.