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Quotes about knowledge

236 quotes from 164 people

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That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.
Doris Lessing1919–2013The Four-Gated City (1969)
- Education
If Virtue & Knowledge are diffus’d among the People, they will never be enslav’d. This will be their great Security.
Samuel Adams1722–1803Letter to James Warren (12 February 1779)
- Virtue
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
Our age has robbed millions of the simplicity of ignorance, and has so far failed to lift them to the simplicity of wisdom.
Robertson Davies1913–1995A Voice from the Attic (1960)
- Wisdom
Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.
Simone de Beauvoir1908–1986Force of Circumstances Vol. III (1963) as translated by Richard Howard (1968)
- Happiness
Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.
Annie Besant1847–1933Annie Besant: An Autobiography (1893), p. 357; 3rd edition (1908), p. 357
- Thinking
I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.
Salman Rushdieborn 1947Salman Rushdie — Talking with David Frost (1993)
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
Fighting wars is not so much about killing people as it is about finding things out. The more you know, the more likely you are to win a battle.
Tom Clancy1947–2013Schafer interview (1995)
- War & Peace
The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite.
Werner Heisenberg1901–1976Physics and Philosophy (1958)
- Science
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
Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge.
Sun Tzu544–496 BCThe Art of War, Chapter XIII · Intelligence and Espionage
- War & Peace
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
They say to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.
Gore Vidal1925–2012Julian (1964), Chapter 4
Power rests on the kind of knowledge that one holds. What is the sense of knowing things that are useless? They will not prepare us for our unavoidable encounter with the unknown.
CCCarlos Castaneda1925–1998The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe (1998), “Quotations from The Teachings of Don Juan” (Chapter 4)
- Power