“The more we study, we the more discover / Our ignorance.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Calderón, “Scenes from the <i>Magico Prodigioso</i>” fourth speech of Cyprian, as translated by Shelley, found in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Scott, William B, ed. https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofp1934shel/page/577
Misattributed

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 17, 2025. History

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Percy Bysshe Shelley 246

English Romantic poet 1792–1822

Warren Weaver (1894–1978) American mathematician

Source: "A Scientist Ponders Faith," Saturday Review, 3 (January 1959), as cited in: F.A. Hayek, ‎Ronald Hamowy. The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition. 2013, p. 77.
Context: Is science really gaining in its assault on the totality of the unsolved? As science learns one answer, it is characteristically true that it also learns several new questions. It is as though science were working in a great forest of ignorance, making an ever larger circular clearing within which, not to insist on the pun, things are clear... But as that circle becomes larger and larger, the circumference of contact with ignorance also gets longer and longer. Science learns more and more. But there is an ultimate sense in which it does not gain; for the volume of the appreciated but not understood keeps getting larger. We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.

“The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Variant translation: The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, clear, and well-defined will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. The main source of our ignorance lies in the fact that our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)
Context: The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance — the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

“The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realise that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and interdependent.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Source: The Web of Life (1996), p. 3; As cited in: Michael C. Jackson (2000) Systems Approaches to Management. p. 5.

“We are at a point in our work when we can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context in our studies. (p. 5)”

Edward Said book Culture and Imperialism

Source: Culture and Imperialism

“The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature.”

Oscar Wilde book Intentions

What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.
Intentions (1891)

“When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body, pg 37

“Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown”

Humphry Davy (1778–1829) Cornish chemist

Discourse Delivered at the Royal Society (30 November 1825), published in Six Discourses delivered before the Royal Society, at their Anniversary Meetings, on the Award of the Royal and Copley Medals, preceded by an Address to the Society on the Progress and Prospects of Science (1827); also in The Edinburgh Review Or Critical Journal (October 1827)
Context: Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer.

“Why study this fringe area …? If one considers it worthless, lacking in veracity, won't discussing it give it more credibility than it deserves? If we ignore it, perhaps it will go away.”

Stephen Williams (archeologist)

As quoted in Sumathi Ramaswamy: The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories (University of California Press, 2004) p.3

“In our first pilot study we talked with clerical and production workers as well as professional and managerial people. We discovered that the professional and managerial groups were more verbal, showed a quicker grasp of the technique, and gave more and better delineated sequences of events than the clerical and production groups.
The second pilot study was restricted to managerial and professional people. On the basis of our experiences in this work, we decided to concentrate in the major sample on engineers and accountants. It was apparent in the results of this second pilot that engineers were able to give exceptionally vivid accounts of their work experiences. Since our study was still in the nature of an exploratory project, it was vital to us that we mine where the metal was richest.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 32

“We will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

“The more we study, we the more discover / Our ignorance.”

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Percy Bysshe Shelley 246

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