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Quotes about knowledge

236 quotes from 164 people

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Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
- Science
Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.
Sri Aurobindo1872–1950Jnana
- Inspiration
What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Carlyle, Essays, On History. Quote reported in Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
- Experience
The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called “guessing what was at the other side of the hill.”
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington1769–1852Remark to John Wilson Croker (4 September 1852), in L. J. Jennings (ed.), The Croker Papers
- War & Peace
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
It is true that every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application.
Sydney Smith1771–1845“Female Education” (review of Thomas Broadhurst, Advice to Young Ladies on the Improvement of Mind, 1808), in The Edinburgh Review, No. 30 (January 1810), p. 314
- Power
The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it, into which a young gentleman should be enter’d by degrees, as he can bear it; and the earlier the better, so he be in safe and skillful hands to guide him.
John Locke1632–1704Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), Sec. 94
- Education
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
Montesquieu1689–1755Pensées et Fragments Inédits de Montesquieu (1899)
- Education
To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
Anatole France1844–1924The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881), Pt. II, ch. 2
The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951The Blue Book (c. 1931–1935; published 1965), p. 45
- Philosophy
The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.
Helen Keller1880–1968The World I Live In (1908), ch. 8: The Five-Sensed World
If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend.
Baltasar Gracián1601–1658The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647), Maxim 15 (p. 9)
I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
Douglas Adams1952–2001The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXXVIII: On liberal and vocational studies, Line 45.