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.
What harm in learning and getting knowledge even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a mitten, or a slipper.
For ignorance is the mother of devotion, as all the world knows, and these times can amply witness.
Ignorance plays the chief part among men, and the multitude of words.
And thou my minde aspire to higher things;
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust.
If there ever comes a day when I deliberately embrace ignorance, I’ll have lived one day too long.
Knowledge, when only the possession of a few, has almost always been turned to iniquitous purposes.
A life of knowledge is not often a life of injury and crime.
Oh, be wise, Thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.