Quotes About Knowledge

160 quotes

7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.

Finnish software engineer

Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.

Japanese novelist and poet

i wish you could understand me, but of course it is not the way of this world that we are ever completely understood.

Italian Dominican friar, philosopher and mathematician

It is proper that noble spirits, equipped with truth and enlightened with the Divine intelligence, should arm themselves against dense ignorance by climbing up to the high rock and tower of contemplation.

German mathematician and astronomer

I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.

Member of the British royal family and Princess of Wales

I want my boys to have an understanding of people's emotions, their insecurities, people's distress, and their hopes and dreams.

Venezuelan statesman and military officer

Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction

American philosopher

A mind might ponder its thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.

— Self-Reliance and Other Essays

British writer and journalist

If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality.

— 1984

British philosopher and logician

We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

— Authority and the Individual

English mystery and detective writer

In fact there is only your own instinct? Not instinct, Hastings. Instinct is a bad word. It is my knowledge-my experience-that tells me that something about that letter is wrong-

— The A.B.C. Murders

5th-century BCE Greek philosopher

...[T]hese people... are my dangerous accusers because those who hear them suppose that anyone who inquires into such matters... theories about the heavens... and everything below the earth... must be an atheist.

— Apology, Crito and Phaedo of Socrates.

German philosopher

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

— Critique of Pure Reason

Dutch philosopher

Every person should embrace those [dogmas] that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most to strengthen in him love of justice.

— Theological-Political Treatise

American boxer

The greatest victory in life is to rise above the material things that we once valued most.

— The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey

English philosopher and physician

It is therefore worthwhile, to search out the bounds between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things, whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent, and moderate our persuasions.

— An Essay Concerning Human Understanding