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Knowledge Quotes

Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, John Locke, Samuel Johnson and Einstein are all near the top, which gives the page its character: mostly people who thought about how we know things, rather than about how to feel clever. Johnson gives the most useful single line, in Boswell’s Life (1791): “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.” Wittgenstein, in On Certainty (1969), says that knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

A lot of the quotes people look for here are flagged. “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing” is credited to Socrates; see the note on the Wisdom page. “Contempt prior to investigation” is credited to Einstein, and a line about putting the Lord at every turn in the refuge of a miracle is credited to Galileo.

Random quote on Knowledge

Most quoted on knowledge:

A desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.

Samuel Johnson

And is this the prime
And heaven-sprung message of the olden time?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven.

Zhuangzi

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education & free discussion are the antidotes of both.

Thomas Jefferson

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.

John Locke Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

Mark Twain

What is hid is unknown: for what is unknown there is no desire.

Ovid

It is consummate ignorance to kick against the pricks.

Terence

Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft-times no connexion. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

William Cowper The Task (1785)

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 (1983)

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Samuel Johnson The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)

What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?

Thomas Carlyle

To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us.

Anatol Rapoport

If I draw a conclusion, I act on an idea, on an image, on a symbol, which is the structure of thought, and so I am constantly preventing myself from having insight, from understanding things as they are.

Jiddu Krishnamurti On Mind and Thought (1993)

Real knowledge, like every thing else of the highest value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, — studied for, — thought for, — and, more than all, it must be prayed for.

Thomas Arnold

They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge

Thomas Brackett Reed

Ignorance always carries a price tag.

Chad Oliver

Any time you combine ignorance and borrowed money, you can get some pretty interesting consequences.

Warren Buffett

The truest characters of ignorance
Are vanity, and pride, and annoyance.

Samuel Butler

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown,
The lowest of your throng.

John Milton

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