Quotes about knowledge
236 quotes from 164 people
It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
Carl Sagan1934–1996Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 159I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
Richard Feynman1918–1988What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988), “The Making of a Scientist”, p. 14I don’t know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
Richard Feynman1918–1988From Omni interview, “The Smartest Man in the World” (1979) p. 203- Richard Feynman1918–1988The Value of Science (1955)
You do ill if you praise, and still worse if you reprove in a matter you do not understand.
Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, tr. J. P. Richter, XIX: Philosophical Maxims
Terence McKenna1946–2000Spacetime Tsunami, Interview with Carla Sinclair, bOING bOING #10.
Calvin Coolidge1872–1933From ‘Address at Holy Cross’ (25 June 1919), published in Have Faith In Massachusetts: A Collection of Speeches and Messages (2nd Ed.), Coolidge, Houghton Mifflin, p. 231.Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right.
CCharlemagne747–814De Litteris Colendis (c. 780–800); translation from T. H. Huxley, Science and Education (1893)It is impossible to correct abuses unless we know that they’re going on.
Julian Assangeborn 1971Talk at the Oslo Freedom Forum (April 2010)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881Letter to his brother Mikhail (1839), as translated in Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971), p. 17He knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
