quotations about knowledge
The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
JOHN LOCKE
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend.
BALTASAR GRACIAN
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
That is the beginning of knowledge--the discovery of something we do not understand.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
You must know all there is to know in your particular field and keep on the alert for new knowledge. The least difference in knowledge between you and another man may spell his success and your failure.
HENRY FORD
Theosophist Magazine, Feb. 1930
All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Is not the fraction which you know, in relation to their totality, what a single number is to infinity?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
speech to Congress, Jan. 8, 1790
Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.
ALAN MOORE
V for Vendetta
The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
All the King's Men
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
You have to live to really know things.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Although humans have existed on this planet for perhaps 2 million years, the rapid climb to modern civilization within the last 200 years was possible due to the fact that the growth of scientific knowledge is exponential; that is, its rate of expansion is proportional to how much is already known. The more we know, the faster we can know more. For example, we have amassed more knowledge since World War II than all the knowledge amassed in our 2-million-year evolution on this planet. In fact, the amount of knowledge that our scientists gain doubles approximately every 10 to 20 years.
MICHIO KAKU
Hyperspace
The less we know, the longer the explanation.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
All knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom.
PLATO
Menexenus
Knowledge often cuts the root that supports it.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
All I want is to know things. The black gulph of the infinite is before me ...
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Frank Belknap, February 27, 1931