Knowledge quotes
2.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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""I should have more faith," he said; "I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears opposed to a long train of deductions it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.""
"I don't know nothing, I think. And glad of it."
"We know the laws of trial and error, of large numbers and probabilities. We know that these laws are part of the mathematical and mechanical fabric of the universe, and that they are also at play in biological processes. But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?"
"There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times."
"Oh, be wise, Thou! Instructed that true knowledge leads to love."
"Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind."
"After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions Guides us by vanities."
"And all these questions I ask myself. It is not in a spirit of curiosity. I cannot be silent. About myself I need know nothing. Here all is clear. No, all is not clear. But the discourse must go on. So one invents obscurities. Rhetoric."
"Enough to know no knowing."
"And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim."
"We live in a system of approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domesticated."
"And what avails it that science has come to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our pretension of property and even of self-hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not finalities, but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generalization?"
"Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again."
"Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed."
"Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it."
"Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge."
"Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles."
"Statistics, one may hope, will improve gradually, and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go: "A judicious man," says he, "looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him.""
"Love is ever the beginning of knowledge as fire is of light."
"In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing."
