“The hordes of words that fill our books proclaim our ignorance, reveal the obscurities that flood our knowledge. If we were perfectly enlightened, our moral books would contain only maxims and our books on physics and spirituality would contain only axioms and facts. Everything else is clutter and shows no more than our gropings, our efforts, and our difficulties.”

Source: The Fabric of Reality (1997), Ch.3

1960s

"Unconditional Teaching," Educational Leadership

Jami al-Uloon wa'l-Hikm, p. 363

Statement (1 November 1937), as quoted in Atatürk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey (2002) by Andrew Mango

1960s, Freedom From The Known (1969)
Context: For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We say, "Tell me all about it — what lies beyond the hills and the mountains and the earth?" and we are satisfied with their descriptions, which means that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We are secondhand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear.

2010s, Address to the United States Congress, Mercy Is 'What Pleases God Most

Source: The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012), p. 151

Source: My Name is Red