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.
Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
Let me be known as just the man that told you something you already knew.
Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.
Oh, for the rebirth of an educational system where understanding was an essential part of knowledge.
Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.
The foundation of economic development is the acquisition of more productive knowledge.
The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.
Every individual being has the ability to acquire intuitive knowledge.