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Quotes about knowledge

236 quotes from 164 people

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I’ll burn my books!
Christopher Marlowe1564–1593Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), spoken by FaustusIn context
- Reading
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo’s laurel-bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Christopher Marlowe1564–1593Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), spoken by ChorusIn context
- Life & Death
Knowing is what counts. To know one’s country and govern it with that knowledge is the only way to free it from tyranny.
José Martí1853–1895Our America (1891)
- Government
In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data.
James Clerk Maxwell1831–1879Letter to Lewis Campbell (9 November 1851), in Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882), ch. 6, p. 159
- Facts
Ignorance and confidence are constant companions.
John McAfee1945–2021Into the Heart of Truth (2001)
- Intelligence
I think people have a very narrow conception of what is possible with reality, that we’re surrounded by the howling abyss of the unknowable and nobody knows what’s out there.
Terence McKenna1946–2000Spacetime Tsunami, Interview with Carla Sinclair, bOING bOING #10.
It’s innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn’t.
MMMignon McLaughlin1913–1983The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook (1981)
Ignorance is the parent of fear
Herman Melville1819–1891Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter IIIIn context
- Fear
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956“What I Believe” in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 139; some of these expressions were also used separately in other Mencken essays.
- Freedom
- Truth & Lies
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
James A. Michener1907–1997Space (1982)
- History
The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.
Arthur Miller1915–2005Commenting on After the Fall (1964) in The Saturday Evening Post (February 1, 1964)
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
Henry Miller1891–1980Tropic of Capricorn (1939)
Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
Michel de Montaigne1533–1592Essais (wr. 1571–92; pub. 1580–95), Book I, Ch. 31. Of Divine Ordinances (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842)
- Faith
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
Montesquieu1689–1755Pensées et Fragments Inédits de Montesquieu (1899)
- Education
Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.
Toni Morrison1931–2019Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
- Talking