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.
Nothing is so dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is worth more.
Is then thy knowledge of no value, unless another know that thou possessest that knowledge?
A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.
Nor do I know what is become
Of him, more than the Pope of Rome.
He declared that he knew nothing, except the fact of his ignorance.
All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge.