quotations about knowledge
How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on.
ANNE RICE
The Vampire Lestat
You have to live to really know things.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Knowledge grows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn, and the faster we expand our knowledge base.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
Knowledge alone doth not amount to Virtue; but certainly there is no Virtue without Knowledge.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
That is the beginning of knowledge--the discovery of something we do not understand.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
Those who have knowledge are more confident than those who have no knowledge, and they are more confident after they have learned than before.
PLATO
Protagoras
Knowledge is power. Power to do evil ... or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.
VERONICA ROTH
Allegiant
Knowledge shuts a man's mouth.
ERWIN SYLVANUS
Dr. Korczak and the Children
Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
speech to Congress, Jan. 8, 1790
Religion has treated knowledge sometimes as an enemy, sometimes as a hostage; often as a captive, and more often as a child: but knowledge has become of age; and religion must either renounce her acquaintance, or introduce her as a companion and respect her as a friend.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
All men by nature desire to know.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
The most that any of us know, is the least of that which is to be known.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink: the one you purchase of the wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them away in other vessels, and before you receive them into the body as food, you may deposit them at home and call in any experienced friend who knows what is good to be eaten or drunken, and what not, and how much, and when; and hence the danger of purchasing them is not so great. But when you buy the wares of knowledge you cannot carry them away in another vessel; they have been sold to you, and you must take them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefited by the lesson.
PLATO
Protagoras
We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
We just do not see how very specialized the use of "I know" is.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty
For knowing is spoken of in three ways: it may be either universal knowledge or knowledge proper to the matter in hand or actualising such knowledge; consequently three kinds of error also are possible.
ARISTOTLE
Prior Analytics
When the panting and thirsting soul first drinks the delicious waters of truth, when the moral and intellectual tastes and desires first seize the fragrant fruits that flourish in the garden of knowledge, then does the child catch a glimpse and foretaste of heaven.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts