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.
It is astonishing what you can do when you have a lot of energy, ambition and plenty of ignorance.
Most of my reputation is a product of exaggeration and ignorance.
We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.
Extreme pride or dejection indicates extreme ignorance of self.
The secret of liberty is to enlighten men, as that of tyranny is to keep them in ignorance.
We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.
On the mystery of the Trinity, the correct confession of which is ignorance of knowledge.
No faith can possibly suffice. It’s always undermined by ignorance.
As for your ignorance — do not fear it. Instead be humbled by it and tend to it.