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Quotes about knowledge

236 quotes from 164 people

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After such knowledge, what forgiveness?
T. S. Eliot1888–1965Poems (1920), “Gerontion”
- Forgiveness
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965The Waste Land (1922), IIn context
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882
There is no knowledge that is not power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Society and Solitude (1870), Old Age
- Power
Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.
Friedrich Engels1820–1895Anti-Dühring, pt. 1, ch. 11 (1877)
- Freedom
You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.
Erasmus1466–1536Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 114
- Education
Ignorance of one’s misfortunes is clear gain.
Euripides481–407 BCFrg. 205.3 (Bartlett’s, 1892); cf. Davenant
How can any man, whose eyes
Are wholesome, seek to rear his children wise
Beyond men’s wont? Much helplessness in arts
Of common life, and in their townsmen’s hearts
Envy deep-set … so much their learning brings!
Come unto fools with knowledge of new things,
They deem it vanity, not knowledge.
Euripides481–407 BCMedea (431 BC), Part 1, spoken by MedeaIn context
- Envy
- Intelligence
A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.
Richard Feynman1918–1988“The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics,” Nobel Lecture (11 December 1965)
- Truth & Lies
I 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. 14
I 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
Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it.
Richard Feynman1918–1988The Value of Science (1955)
- Science
I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
Harry Emerson Fosdick1878–1969Riverside Sermons (1958), p. 22
To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
Anatole France1844–1924The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881), Pt. II, ch. 2
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Ben Franklin, as quoted in Exercises in English Grammar (1909) by M. A. Morse.