Quotes About Knowledge

Encyclopedia-selling was known to be the last resort of the feckless, the inept, and the desperate

He wants to see, he wants to know, only to see and know. I'm aware that it is this mentality, this curiosity, which is responsible for the hydrogen bomb and the imminent demise of civilization and that we would all be better off if we were still at the stone-worshipping stage. Though surely it is not this affable inquisitiveness that should be blamed.

What you don't know won't hurt you.

The Fall was ongoing, but its trajectory led ever downward. Sucked into the well of knowledge, you could only plummet, learning more and more, but not getting any happier.

Forbidden things are open to the imagination. That was why Eve ate the Apple of Knowledge, said Aunt Vidala: too much imagination. So it was better not to know some things. Otherwise your petals would get scattered.

Maybe I don't really want to know what's going on. Maybe I'd rather not know. Maybe I couldn't bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.

She was an infallible prophetess, and these powers came from her ability to look into the patterns of the universe.

If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to." ? Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Like stage magic, knowledge before you knew it took place before your very eyes, but you were looking elsewhere.

All this is pure speculation. I don't really know what men used to say. I had only their words for it.

This is perhaps why Dante chooses the poet Virgil to be his guide in the Inferno; in visiting a strange location, it's always best to go with someone who's been there before, and – most important of all on a sightseeing tour of Hell – who might also know how to get you out again.

All that festers is not gold, but it can be made profitable in non-monetary ways: knowledge is power, especially discreditable knowledge. I am not the first person to have recognized this, or to have capitalized on it when possible: every intelligence agency in the world has always known it.

She's certainly old enough," said Aunt Vidala. "We have taught her all we can. If they stay in school too long, they become disruptive.

Melanie laughed and said, "No he isn't." I decided she was naive. I was the age at which parents suddenly transform from people who know everything into people who know nothing.

Ignorieren ist nicht das gleiche wie Ignoranz, man muß etwas dazu tun.

was the age at which parents suddenly transform from people who know everything into people who know nothing.

What were these animals then? They didn't have names, but I knew what they were.

Ah the Eternal Stupid Woman! How we enjoy hearing about her: as she listens to the con-artist yarns of the plausible snake, and ends up eating the free sample of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge: thus giving birth to Theology; or as she opens the tricky gift box containing all human evils, but is stupid enough to believe that Hope will be some kind of a solace.

I was the age at which parents suddenly transform from people who know everything into people who know nothing.

Our big mistake was teaching them to read. We won't do that again.

You'll learn about all of that when you're old enough," Aunt Vidala would say. All of that: the Handmaids were part of all of that. Something bad, then; something damaging, or something damaged, which might be the same thing.

Being able to read and write did not provide the answers to all questions. It led to other questions, and then to others.

To wonder is to begin to know

My only defense is the acquisition of vocabulary.