“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician
Anthony Bourdain book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Source: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
No published occurrence of such an attribution has yet been located prior to one in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre — Band 3 http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2411/pg2411.html by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Variant: Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply!”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter
Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God
Context: Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God disappeared. I kept this to myself. I never discussed it with my parents. My father in any event was a nonpracticing Lutheran, until a deathbed conversion that rather disappointed me. I’m sure he agreed to it for my mother’s sake. Did I start calling myself an agnostic or an atheist? No, and I still don’t. I avoid that because I don’t want to provide a category that people can apply to me. Those who say that “believer” and “atheist” are concrete categories do violence to the mystery we must be humble enough to confess. I would not want my convictions reduced to a word.
“It is not enough to do good; one must do it the right way.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor
Rousseau http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14052/14052-h/14052-h.htm (1876)
“We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough, and if it isn't good enough, it has to do.”
Stephen King book The Dead Zone
Source: The Dead Zone 1979
Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.
“Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.”
Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom