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.
That virtue only makes our bliss below,
And all our knowledge is ourselves to know.
Knowledge is the antidote to fear,—
Knowledge, Use and Reason, with its higher aids.
Without love the acquisition of knowledge only increases confusion and leads to self-destruction.
He knew what 's what, and that 's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly.
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.