quotations about knowledge
The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Emile
Learned men fall into error oftenest by mistaking knowledge for wisdom.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The knowledge of useful things is a purse seldom lost.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
All knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom.
PLATO
Menexenus
As I came not into life with any knowledge of it, and as my likings are for what is old, I busy myself in seeking knowledge there.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
Everybody knows something, and nobody knows everything.
DUSTY BAKER
Esquire, Apr. 2004
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one's own knowledge is not to overstep them.
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
Leopardi: Poems and Prose
What we know is built on what we do not know.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS
Pantagruel
By enlarging your knowledge of things, you will find your knowledge of self is enlarged.
CHARLES DE LINT
"The Pochade Box", The Ivory and the Horn
What we know is to what we do not know, as a grain of sand is to the beach.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Knowledge ... shall always bear witness like a clarion to its creator.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
I tried to think of my knowledge, but it was a squirrel's heap of winter nuts. There was no strength in my knowledge any more and I felt small and naked as a new-hatched bird.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
"By the Waters of Babylon"
The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
To receive instruction and knowledge is as natural as to receive the light of the sun, if a man opens his eyes.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Let no one, then, seek to know from me what I know that I do not know; unless he perhaps wishes to learn to be ignorant of that of which all we know is, that it cannot be known.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
If you are truly wise, you will conceal your knowledge from the world, and let every fool think himself your superior, especially if you have anything to gain by him; for envy is the strongest passion of the weak, and mediocrity is the hot-bed on which all the meaner passions flourish.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims
The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
STEPHEN HAWKING
attributed, The Prism and the Rainbow