Motivational Quotes

Knowledge

We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world -- introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably -- that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.

- Lippmann, Walter

Best Quotes about Knowledge

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Vague and mysterious forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with little or no meaning have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hindrance of true knowledge.

Locke, John

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

Michener, James A.

It is disgraceful to live as a stranger in one's country, and be an alien in any matter that affects our welfare.

Manutius

Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.

Comte, Auguste

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. [King Solomon]

Bible

Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.

Knowledge, like religion, must be experienced in order to be known.

Whipple, Edwin P.

10.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.

Mill, John Stuart

11.

Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; love by love.

Szasz, Thomas

12.

It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.

Bernard, Claude

13.

And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. [John 8:32]

Bible

14.

One secures the gold of the spirit when he finds himself.

Bristol, Claude M.

15.

It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.

Stoppard, Tom

16.

You have to believe in God before you can say there are things that man was not meant to know. I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do.

Cronenberg, David

17.

It's a dangerous thing to think we know everything.

Kuehler, Jack

18.

Search not to find things too deeply hid; Nor try to know things whose knowledge is forbid.

Denham, Sir John

19.

You have to know what's important and what's unimportant, for you.

Fink, David Harold

20.

Lippmann, Walter

21.

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

Fischer, Martin H.

22.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.

Epictetus

24.

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.

Thoreau, Henry David

25.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Aristotle

26.

Knowledge, without common sense, says Lee, is folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, it is fanaticism; without religion, it is death. But with common sense, it is wisdom with method, it is power; with clarity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.

Farrar, Austin

27.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

28.

No matter what happens, there's always somebody who knew it would.

Starr, Lonny

29.

Who knows most believes least.

Proverb

30.

Men can acquire knowledge, but not wisdom. Some of the greatest fools ever known were learned men.

Proverb, Spanish

31.

Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

Thoreau, Henry David

32.

To me the charm of an encyclopedia is that it knows and I needn't.

Brown, Francis Yeats

33.

Try to put well in practice what you already know. In so doing, you will, in good time, discover the hidden things you now inquire about.

Rembrandt (Harmenszoon van Rijn)

34.

He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand --like precious fragments or torsos in a collector's gallery --in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.

Benjamin, Walter

35.

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practiced, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.

Charron, Pierre

36.

To know the right means of getting something done is virtually to have done it.

Caine, Mark

37.

Many people think of knowledge as money, They would like knowledge, but do not want to face the perseverance and self-denial that goes into the acquisition of it.

Morely, John

38.

Never by reflection, but only by doing is self-knowledge possible to one.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

I wish I knew what I know now before.

Stewart, Rod

40.

To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

41.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.

Eliot, George

42.

Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.

Chesterfield, Lord

43.

Since we can't know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.

Holt, John

44.

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

Toffler, Alvin

45.

Sin, guilt, neurosis --they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Miller, Henry

46.

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.

Richard Feynman

47.

Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

48.

There's a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: Where was I before I was born. In the beginning was what? Perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it.

Carter, Angela

49.

Those who think they know it all are very annoying to those of us who do.

Mueller, Robert K.

50.

I know myself, but that is all.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott