Modest doubt is call'd the beacon of the wise.
— Troilus and Cressida
Quotes About Knowledge
Galileo drew a line between two ways of knowing: where the senses fail us, reason must step in. Isaac Newton found the limit of both. He could calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, he said, but not the madness of people. Nikola Tesla wrote with confidence about how electrical science had added to the exactness of our knowledge.
Other writers were less sure that knowing more is always good. Nietzsche claimed that knowledge kills action, because action requires the veils of illusion. Edgar Allan Poe placed happiness in the acquisition of knowledge rather than its possession, warning that to know all would be the curse of a fiend. Shakespeare counted modest doubt as a mark of the wise, and Oscar Wilde told his reader that we know more than we think we know, just as we know less than we want to know. Goethe's verdict on himself is the most disarming: not omniscient, but knowing a lot.
Other writers were less sure that knowing more is always good. Nietzsche claimed that knowledge kills action, because action requires the veils of illusion. Edgar Allan Poe placed happiness in the acquisition of knowledge rather than its possession, warning that to know all would be the curse of a fiend. Shakespeare counted modest doubt as a mark of the wise, and Oscar Wilde told his reader that we know more than we think we know, just as we know less than we want to know. Goethe's verdict on himself is the most disarming: not omniscient, but knowing a lot.
You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.
— The Picture of Dorian Gray
His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.
— Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.
— Human, All Too Human
That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.
— The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.
— Persuasion
Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere.
— The Brothers Karamazov
You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.
— Major Barbara
At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation.
— 1984
Neither love without knowledge nor knowledge without love can produce a good life.
— Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
One knows so little. When one knows more it is too late.
— Three Act Tragedy
— Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
All men by nature desire knowledge.
— On Man in the Universe
Socrates: This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe [that I know anything].
— Apology
Knowledge that is acquiredis not like this. Those who have it worry ifaudiences like it or not. It's a bait for popularity. Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul...The only real customer is God. Chew quietlyyour sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stayplayfully childish.
— The Essential Rumi
Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.
— Parerga and Paralipomena
Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.
— Maxims and Reflections
All we can do is to prepare for a universal language that will go on changing for ever. We don’t know everything. We aren’t final. I wish we could make that statement a part of the Fundamental Law.
— The Holy Terror
We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.
— Meditations
One had to live a long time to know a man's true nature.
— Love in the Time of Cholera
It was easier to know it than to explain why I knew it.
— A Study in Scarlet
If things far away don’t concern you, you’ll soon mourn things close at hand.
— The Analects
Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.
— Memoirs of a Madman
Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know all, were the curse of a fiend.
— The Complete Poetry