quotations about knowledge
If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.
AYN RAND
Atlas Shrugged
He that knew all that ever Learning writ,
Knew only this -- that he knew nothing yet.
APHRA BEHN
The Emperor of the Moon
When the fields of human knowledge are so various and so vast as is the case in our day, the utmost that can be done by single minds not of encyclopedic range, is to master one subject or branch of subject as thoroughly as possible, and to rest content with knowing that others are working in regions where neither time nor strength will permit us to enter.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.
JEAN ROSTAND
attributed, The Essential Prose (Ghent & Maas
The heavens and the earth, the woods and the wayside, teem with instruction and knowledge to the curious and thoughtful.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
But knowledge that is delivered as a thread to be spun on ought to be delivered and intimated, if it were possible, in the same method wherein it was invented: and so is it possible of knowledge induced. But in this same anticipated and prevented knowledge, no man knoweth how he came to the knowledge which he hath obtained. But yet, nevertheless, secundum majus et minus, a man may revisit and descend unto the foundations of his knowledge and consent; and so transplant it into another, as it grew in his own mind. For it is in knowledges as it is in plants: if you mean to use the plant, it is no matter for the roots--but if you mean to remove it to grow, then it is more assured to rest upon roots than slips: so the delivery of knowledges (as it is now used) is as of fair bodies of trees without the roots; good for the carpenter, but not for the planter. But if you will have sciences grow, it is less matter for the shaft or body of the tree, so you look well to the taking up of the roots. Of which kind of delivery the method of the mathematics, in that subject, hath some shadow: but generally I see it neither put in use nor put in inquisition, and therefore note it for deficient.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existant and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Life Divine
All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.
PHILIP ROTH
The Human Stain
No man's knowledge can go beyond his experience.
JOHN LOCKE
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The desire for knowledge in a particular direction is a sure indication that we have the potential power to acquire and assimilate that knowledge and become an authority on that particular subject. This desire is a seed which has somehow been sown in our mind, and is as much alive as the acorn which grows into a mighty oak.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"How to Acquire Knowledge", Human Life from Many Angles
What a man does not understand, he does not possess.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
When our mind is concentrated in a particular direction and is obsessed with an intense desire to find the answer to a particular problem; we are in deep study and in quiet meditation, we are in a subjective state of consciousness; in contact with the infinite storehouse of all knowledge, and need not be surprised at any wonderful new idea or revelation that may come to us.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"How to Acquire Knowledge", Human Life from Many Angles
Growth in Knowledge, like productiveness in Art, can hardly, so far as its direct consequences are concerned, do otherwise than subserve the cause of progress.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
That stupid saying "What you don't know can't hurt you" is ridiculous. What you don't know can kill you. If you don't know that tractor trailer trucks hurt when hitting you, then you can play in the middle of the interstate with no fear - but that doesn't mean you won't get killed.
DAVE RAMSEY
Financial Peace Revisited
Can you avoid knowledge? You cannot! Can you avoid technology? You cannot! Things are going to go ahead in spite of ethics, in spite of your personal beliefs, in spite of everything.
JOSE M.R. DELGADO
Scientific American, October 2005
It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.
JOHN LOCKE
epistle to the reader, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The function of knowledge is to transcend earthly experience, not to wallow in it.
SUSAN HUBBARD
The Society of S
Those as knows the least have a habit of thinkin' they know all there is to know, while them as knows the most admits what a turr'ble big world this is. It's the knowing ones that realize one lifetime ain't long enough to git more'n a few dips o' the oars of knowledge.
L. FRANK BAUM
The Scarecrow of Oz
Wonder is the desire of knowledge.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Summa Theologica
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs in different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and of many things I don't know anything about, but I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.
RICHARD FEYNMAN
Horizon interview, 1981