Quotes About Knowledge

160 quotes

Italian–American physicist

Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.

Irish poet, playwright, and aesthete

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.

— The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Russian novelist

He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.

— Crime and Punishment

Author, novelist, writer

She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.

— Emma

French writer, historian and philosopher

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning.

— Philosophical Dictionary

English writer

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.

— The Time Machine

German philosopher

That the Negroes were enslaved more than other races, and on a large scale, is evidently a result of their being, in contrast to other races, inferior in intelligence - which, however, does not justify such slavery

— On The Will In Nature

American writer and literary critic

If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?

— The Imp of The Perverse

American theoretical physicist

I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!

— Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

Florentine poet, writer, and philosopher

Behave like men, and not like witless sheep...

— Paradiso

Hong Kong–American martial artist and actor

Relationship is understanding. It is a process of self-revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself -- to be is to be related.

— Tao of Jeet Kune Do

American author and journalist

The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?''Of course. Who said it?''I don't know.''He was probably a coward,' she said. "He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them.

— A Farewell to Arms

American author and humorist

It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

Cuban politician, author and revolutionary

The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger.

French chemist and microbiologist

Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.

4th-century BCE Greek philosopher

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

— The Republic

German writer, artist, natural scientist and politician

The things I know, every man can know, but, oh, my heart is mine alone!

— The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings