Famously Said Random quote

Topics/Education

Quotes about knowledge

236 quotes from 164 people

Most readBy personPage 12 of 16

I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.
Vladimir Nabokov1899–1977Strong Opinions (1973), p. 45
- Writing
Young man, in mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.
John von Neumann1903–1957Reply to a physicist friend, per Felix T. Smith; as quoted in Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1984 ed.), p. 208n
- Science
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton1643–1727Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [dated as 5 February 1675 using the Julian calendar with March 25th rather than January 1st as New Years Day, equivalent to 15 February 1676 by Gregorian reckonings.] A facsimile of the original is online at
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton1643–1727Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27)
To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
George Orwell1903–1950“In Front of Your Nose,” Tribune (22 March 1946)
Science cannot be stopped. Man will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences – and we cannot predict what they will be.
Linus Pauling1901–1994Lecture at Yale University, “Chemical Achievement and Hope for the Future.” (October 1947) Published in Science in Progress. Sixth Series. Ed. George A. Baitsell. 100-21, (1949).
- Science
Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
Harold Pinter1930–2008The Homecoming (1965), act 2, sc. 1
- Comedy
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Plato429–349 BCThe Republic (375 BC), Republic, Book VII, 536eIn context
Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible until they have actually been effected?
Pliny the Elder20–79Naturalis Historia, Book VII, sec. 6.
A little Learning is a dang’rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Alexander Pope1688–1744An Essay on Criticism (1711)In context
- Education
The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance.
Karl Popper1902–1994Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)
Errors of knowledge are not breaches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience.
Ayn Rand1905–1982The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
- Morality
Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it.
Wilhelm Reich1897–1957His motto, in the preamble of Charakteranalyse (1933)
- Love
- Work
Man’s right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan.
Wilhelm Reich1897–1957Response to FDA complaint (1954)
- Freedom
You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Will Rogers1879–1935Nationally syndicated column number 90, From Nuts To The Soup (31 August 1924); published in The New York Times