Quotes about knowledge
page 3

“All types of knowledge, ultimately mean self knowledge.”

Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

“Knowledge is a better weapon than a sword.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: Raven's Shadow

“If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you’ll have a wonderful time doing it.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Understanding, Learning, Time

“No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.”

L. Frank Baum book The Lost Princess of Oz

Source: The Lost Princess of Oz

“I conceive a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Books

“The golden rule for understanding spiritually is not intellect, but obedience. If a man wants scientific knowledge, intellectual curiosity is his guide; but if he wants insight into what Jesus Christ teaches, he can only get it by obedience.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Understanding, Christ

“As long as you still experience the stars as something "above you", you lack the eye of knowledge.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Star

“Having made the decision, do not revise it unless some new fact comes to your knowledge. Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Decision, Indecision

“All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Our Eternity, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Death, Pain, Error

“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 Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Love, Hate

“True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 1 Chapter 1, p. 44
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)
Context: Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.

Wisdom, God

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)
Context: Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

Love, Life, Search, Strong

“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book 1, chapter 5.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845)
Variant: To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

“Today will still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time

Universe

“The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 94
Source: Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
Context: 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.

World

“It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Truth, Lovers, Water

“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Understanding

“Curiosity is more important than knowledge.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant: Imagination is more imortant than Knowledge

“We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing (1972)

Sun

“You imagination is more important than your knowledge.”

Mike Murdock (1946) American televangelist

Imagination

“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97; also in Transformation : Arts, Communication, Environment (1950) by Harry Holtzman, p. 138. This may be an edited version of some nearly identical quotes from the 1929 Viereck interview below.
1930s
Context: I believe in intuition and inspiration. … At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

World, Imagination, Birth

“The fact is that those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!”

Galén (129–216) Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher

Galen, On the Natural Faculties, Bk. 1, sect. 13; cited from Arthur John Brock (trans.) On the Natural Faculties (London: Heinemann, 1963) p. 57.

Learning

“Each path to knowledge involves different rules and these rules are not interchangeable.”

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

Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

“Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Faith

“There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Literature, Science, Country, Happiness

“As for will, woman should be consideredto man for Eve ate of the apple for love of knowledge and learning, but Adam ate of it merely because she asked him.”

Donna Woolfolk Cross book Pope Joan

Source: Pope Joan

Love, Learning

“Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Love, Secret

“Knowledge earns you power, character earns you respect.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Variant: Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 46

“Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it's knowledge and questions.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

Pleasure, Sadness, Question, Reading

“Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

World, Art, Communication, Science

“Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Source: The Birth of Tragedy

“As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Men, Books

“All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Source: Leonardo's Notebooks

Error, Science

“Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Faith

“Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 4

Love

“All knowledge hurts.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Hurt

“There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Source: Shadow & Claw

“I learned that night that love is never as ferocious as when you think it is going to leave you. We are not always allowed this knowledge, and so our love sometimes becomes retrospective.”

Anita Shreve book The Weight of Water

Source: The Weight of Water

Love, Thinking, Learning, Night

“I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

World

“Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), edited with Jason A. Shulman, p. 281
General sources

Deep, Wise, Life, Wisdom

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s, What I Believe (1925)
Source: Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Value

Relationship, Cute, Love, Life

“A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1940s, A History of Western Philosophy (1945)

Imagination, Science

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.”

Sam Levenson (1911–1980) American journalist

Deep, Beauty, Happy, Friendship

“No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book II, Ch. 1, sec. 19
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

Scientific American (1992), Vol. 267.

Sea

“Granny sighed. "You have learned something," she said, and thought it safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

Learning

“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Stupidity, Education

“Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Life, War, Art

“378. Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)

“Live in the Moment", "Empty Your Mind of the Trash"
Wisdom is the Use of Knowledge”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Wisdom

“Knowledge is a great gift, and the thirst to seek it even greater. Use what you know… Head and heart… You are not made to give greater weight to one than the other.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Valley of Silence

Heart

“Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion

God, Understanding

“A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.”

Mark Twain book Tom Sawyer Abroad

Source: Tom Sawyer Abroad

Home, Cats, Personality

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason

B 730; Variant translation: All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
Variant: All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.
Source: Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Understanding, Sense

“I had hoped, at my departure, I would feel sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead -- after all, I had been "analyzed." Instead, all I could see were question marks.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Hope, Feeling, Departure, Question

“for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Part I, Ch. 9
Source: To the Lighthouse (1927)
Context: Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscription on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs Ramsay's knee.

Men

“Relearn astonishment, stop grasping for knowledge, lose the habit of the past.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 146
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

Past

“The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Books, Problem, Bird

“.— A person must have one or the other. Either a cheerful disposition by nature, or a disposition made cheerful by art and knowledge.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Source: Human, All Too Human

Art, Nature, Personality

“I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Books

“I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Love, People

“The knowledge of all things is possible”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Anger has its place, but it will not serve you here, the way of the warrior is the way of knowing. Of that knowledge requires you to use anger, then you use anger, but you cannot wrest forth knowledge by losing your temper.”

Christopher Paolini book Inheritance

Source: Inheritance

Way, Anger

“Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

"Public Good" (December 1780) http://www.thomas-paine-friends.org/paine-thomas_public-good-1780.html. <br class="br">1780s

“There is no happiness without knowledge. But knowledge of happiness is unhappy; for knowing ourselves happy is knowing ourselves passing through happiness, and having to, immediatly at once, leave it behind. To know is to kill, in happiness as in everything. Not to know, though, is not to exist.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 328
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Não há felicidade senão com conhecimento. Mas o conhecimento da felicidade é infeliz; porque conhecer-se feliz é conhecer-se passando pela felicidade, e tendo, logo já, que deixá-la atrás. Saber é matar, na felicidade como em tudo. Não saber, porém, é não existir.

Happiness

“I'm very sorry to inconvenience you [ the art dealers G. and J. Berheim-Jeune ], but I find it impossible to supply you with any more Venice pictures. It was useless trying to persuade my self otherwise, the work that's left is too poor for exhibition. Don't insist... I've enough good sense in me to know whether what I'm doing is good or bad, and it' utterly bad, and I can't believe that people of taste, if they have any knowledge at all, could see any value in it. Things have been dragging on like this for far too long..”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in Monet's letter to his art-dealers [[wBernheim-Jeune|G. and J. Berheim-Jeune], Venice, 1912; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 72
1900 - 1920

People, Art, Sense

“The knowledge that unites love and wisdom, that uplifts the spirit is spirituality. The knowledge which gives you a broad vision and a big heart is spirituality.”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (1956) spiritual leader

Bang on the Door (2001)

Love, Wisdom, Heart

“We live in a troubled, but wonderful time. It is our good fortune to witness and benefit from scientific advances that would have been literally unimaginable to our grandparents. However, there are dark clouds on the horizon. The rate of growth of scientific knowledge has been so great as to outstrip the ability of our society to assimilate it, the capacity of the educational system to teach it properly and the wisdom of government adequately to sustain and apply it. There is growing indifference to science among the young. Even medical science, which touches the lives of us all, is generally left to the practitioners. Whatever the reason for this disparity between the importance of science and the lack of general public understanding, it is important to address it.”

Elias James Corey (1928) American chemist

E. J. Corey, ‎Barbara Czakó, ‎László Kürti, Molecules and Medicine (2007). Introduction

Wisdom, Education, Understanding, Science

“As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I can not properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up, and seeking to sustain, the new State government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much as, and no more than, the public knows. In the Annual Message of Dec. 1863 and accompanying Proclamation, I presented a plan of re-construction (as the phrase goes) which, I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to, and sustained by, the Executive government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable; and I also distinctly protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when, or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was, in advance, submitted to the then Cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of it. One of them suggested that I should then, and in that connection, apply the Emancipation Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana; that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed-people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power, in regard to the admission of members to Congress; but even he approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana. The new constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipation for the whole State, practically applies the Proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does not adopt apprenticeship for freed-people; and it is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress. So that, as it applies to Louisiana, every member of the Cabinet fully approved the plan. The message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal; and not a single objection to it, from any professed emancipationist, came to my knowledge, until after the news reached Washington that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it. From about July 1862, I had corresponded with different persons, supposed to be interested, seeking a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana. When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New-Orleans, General Banks wrote me that he was confident the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct, substantially on that plan. I wrote him, and some of them to try it; they tried it, and the result is known. Such only has been my agency in getting up the Louisiana government. As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated. But, as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it, whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest. But I have not yet been so convinced.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Last public address (1865)

People, Confidence, Reading, Parting

“Often it is only after immense intellectual effort, which may have continued over centuries, that humanity at last succeeds in achieving knowledge of a concept in its pure form, by stripping off the irrelevant accretions which veil it from the eye of the mind.”

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) mathematician, logician, philosopher

Translation J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950) as quoted by Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) Vol. 1, p. 56.
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893 and 1903

Effort

“The very fact that religions are not content to stand on their own feet, but insist on crippling or warping the flexible minds of children in their favour, forms a sufficient proof that there is no truth in them. If there were any truth in religion, it would be even more acceptable to a mature mind than to an infant mind—yet no mature mind ever accepts religion unless it has been crippled in infancy. … The whole basis of religion is a symbolic emotionalism which modern knowledge has rendered meaningless & even unhealthy. Today we know that the cosmos is simply a flux of purposeless rearrangement amidst which man is a wholly negligible incident or accident. There is no reason why it should be otherwise, or why we should wish it otherwise. All the florid romancing about man's "dignity", "immortality", &c. &c. is simply egotistical delusions plus primitive ignorance. So, too, are the infantile concepts of "sin" or cosmic "right" & "wrong". Actually, organic life on our planet is simply a momentary spark of no importance or meaning whatsoever. Man matters to nobody except himself. Nor are his "noble" imaginative concepts any proof of the objective reality of the things they visualise. Psychologists understand how these concepts are built up out of fragments of experience, instinct, & misapprehension. Man is essentially a machine of a very complex sort, as La Mettrie recognised nearly 2 centuries ago. He arises through certain typical chemical & physical reactions, & his members gradually break down into their constituent parts & vanish from existence. The idea of personal "immortality" is merely the dream of a child or savage. However, there is nothing anti-ethical or anti-social in such a realistic view of things. Although meaning nothing in the cosmos as a whole, mankind obviously means a good deal to itself. Therefore it must be regulated by customs which shall ensure, for its own benefit, the full development of its various accidental potentialities. It has a fortuitous jumble of reactions, some of which it instinctively seeks to heighten & prolong, & some of which it instinctively seeks to shorten or lessen. Also, we see that certain courses of action tend to increase its radius of comprehension & degree of specialised organisation (things usually promoting the wished-for reactions, & in general removing the species from a clod-like, unorganised state), while other courses of action tend to exert an opposite effect. Now since man means nothing to the cosmos, it is plan that his only logical goal (a goal whose sole reference is to himself) is simply the achievement of a reasonable equilibrium which shall enhance his likelihood of experiencing the sort of reactions he wishes, & which shall help along his natural impulse to increase his differentiation from unorganised force & matter. This goal can be reached only through teaching individual men how best to keep out of each other's way, & how best to reconcile the various conflicting instincts which a haphazard cosmic drift has placed within the breast of the same person. Here, then, is a practical & imperative system of ethics, resting on the firmest possible foundation & being essentially that taught by Epicurus & Lucretius. It has no need of supernatualism, & indeed has nothing to do with it.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (2 May 1936), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 240-241
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, Children, Truth

“Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promises only; pain we obey.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

http://books.google.com/books?id=PSmIRcmLPSQC&q=%22illness+is+the+doctor+to+whom+we+pay+most+heed+to+kindness+to+knowledge+we+make+promises+only+pain+we+obey%22&pg=PA131#v=onepage
La maladie est le plus écouté des médecins: à la bonté, au savoir on ne fait que promettre; on obéit à la souffrance.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bfwLAAAAIAAJ&q=%22La+maladie+est+le+plus+%C3%A9cout%C3%A9+des+m%C3%A9decins+%C3%A0+la+bont%C3%A9+au+savoir+on+ne+fait+que+promettre+on+ob%C3%A9it+%C3%A0+la+souffrance%22&pg=PA160#v=onepage
Pt. II, Ch. 1
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. IV: Cities of the Plain (1921-1922)

Pain

“Self-knowledge — the bitterest knowledge of all and also the kind we cultivate least: what is the use of catching ourselves out, morning to night, in the act of illusion, pitilessly tracing each act back to its root, and losing case after case before our own tribunal?”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Night

“Finally, it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others. The supreme difficulty in connection with developing the peace work of The Hague arises from the lack of any executive power, of any police power to enforce the decrees of the court. In any community of any size the authority of the courts rests upon actual or potential force: on the existence of a police, or on the knowledge that the able-bodied men of the country are both ready and willing to see that the decrees of judicial and legislative bodies are put into effect.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Nobel lecture (1910)

Men, Peace, Communication, Country

“Knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful.”

Plato book Protagoras

313c, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
Protagoras

Food, Soul, Hurt

“The person who seeks knowledge while in his youth is similar to the act of inscribing something upon a rock; while the person who seeks knowledge while he is old is similar to the act of writing something upon the water.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Biharul Anwar, Volume 1, Page 222
Shi'ite Hadith

Youth, Water, Personality

“A doubtful balance is made between truth and pleasure, and… the knowledge of one and the feeling of the other stir up a combat the success of which is very uncertain, since, in order to judge of it, it would be necessary to know all that passes in the innermost spirit of the man, of which man himself is scarcely ever conscious.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

The Art of Persuasion

Pleasure, Truth, Feeling, Success

“A person shall arrive on the Day of Judgement and shall be in possession of good deeds in the measure of vastly accumulated clouds or towering mountains. (Witnessing them) he shall ask: ‘Oh My Lord! How can these be for me when I have not performed them?’ God shall reply: ‘This is your knowledge that you had taught and conveyed to the people, and which was acted upon after you had died.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Biharul Anwar, Volume 2, Page 18
Shi'ite Hadith

God, People, Mountain, Personality

“In the general tendency toward specialization, philosophy too has established itself as a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content. In so doing, philosophy has denied its own constitutive concept: the intellectual freedom that does not obey the dictates of specialized knowledge.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 6

Freedom

“Superficial knowledge … is hurtful to those who possess true genius; for it necessarily draws them away from their main object, wastes their industry over details and subjects foreign to their needs and natural talent, and lastly does not serve, as they flatter themselves, to prove the breadth of their mind. In all ages there have been men of very moderate intelligence who knew much, and so on the contrary, men of the highest intelligence who knew very little. Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of genius.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 178.

Men, Age, Intelligence, Nature

“I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions … I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. … The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Preface to The Bertrand Russell Dictionary of Mind, Matter and Morals (1952) edited by Lester E. Denonn
1950s

Men, Truth, Dreams, Hope

“The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique. In politics, also, a reformer may have just as strong a love of power as a despot. It would be a complete mistake to decry love of power altogether as a motive. Whether you will be led by this motive to actions which are useful, or to actions which are pernicious, depends upon the social system, and upon your capacities.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Love, Motivation, Thinking, Strong

“Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century. The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory.”

Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995) Swedish electrical engineer and plasma physicist

Source: Dean of the Plasma Dissidents (1988), p. 197.

“If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics…”

Roger Bacon book Opus Majus

Bk. 1, ch. 4. Translated by Robert B. Burke, in: Edward Grant (1974) Source Book in Medieval Science. Harvard University Press. p. 93
Opus Majus, c. 1267

Truth, Error, Mathematics, Science

“That is the true definition of sin; when knowing right you do the lower, ah, then you sin. Where there is no knowledge, sin is not present.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

The immediate future: Lectures delivered in Queen's Hall, London, 1911 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=VGNbAAAAMAAJ, p. 32

“There is a wide knowledge gap between us and the developed world in the West and in Asia. Our only choice is to bridge this gap as quickly as possible, because our age is defined by knowledge.”

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (1949) Emirati politician

Quoted in John Leyne, "Dubai ruler in vast charity gift," http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6672923.stm BBC News (2007-05-19)

Age, World

“It seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and for all the rest are much below beasts.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Men, Food, Nature

“The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Commenting on After the Fall (1964) in The Saturday Evening Post (1 February 1964)

Tree

“It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Law, Nature

“I was unable to devote myself to the learning of this algebra and the continued concentration upon it, because of obstacles in the vagaries of time which hindered me; for we have been deprived of all the people of knowledge save for a group, small in number, with many troubles, whose concern in life is to snatch the opportunity, when time is asleep, to devote themselves meanwhile to the investigation and perfection of a science; for the majority of people who imitate philosophers confuse the true with the false, and they do nothing but deceive and pretend knowledge, and they do not use what they know of the sciences except for base and material purposes; and if they see a certain person seeking for the right and preferring the truth, doing his best to refute the false and untrue and leaving aside hypocrisy and deceit, they make a fool of him and mock him.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra (1070).

Life, People, Truth, Fools

“The face of globalisation is contradictory. The internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence into the home. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and change to communities. In all nations - including America - this change can bring fear. Fear that because of modernity we will lose of control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities - those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith. But I also know that human progress cannot be denied. There need not be contradictions between development and tradition.”

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

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

Fear, Family, Faith, Home

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Sometimes attributed to Hawking without a source, but originally from historian Daniel J. Boorstin. It appears in different forms in The Discoverers (1983), Cleopatra's Nose (1995), and introduction to The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1995)
Misattributed

“Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right.”

Charlemagne (748–814) King of the Franks, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor

"De Litteris Colendis", in Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau De la philosophie scolastique (1850) p. 10; translation from T. H. Huxley Science and Education ([1893] 2007) p. 132; in Latin, Quamvis enim melius sit benefacere quam nosse, prius tamen est nosse quam facere.

“18. The deeply learned ones know the mind as the directly expressed meaning of the supreme knowledge. The heart is the meaning aimed at. The Supreme is none other than the heart.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

The Science of the Heart

Learning, Heart

Quotes about knowledge page 3

Quotes about knowledge
page 3