Quotes About Knowledge

In matters where I have no cognizance I hold my tongue.

It is but sorrow to be wise when wisdom profits not.

TEIRESIAS: Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the man that's wise! This I knew well, but had forgotten it, else I would not have come here.

he came to know the god intimately and the strange mad flower of his mind dripped in the dark

Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are right To warn me against losing mine. I cannot say— I hope that I shall never want to say!— that you Have reasoned badly. Yet there are other men Who can reason, too; and their opinions might be helpful. You are not in a position to know everything That people say or do, or what they feel: Your temper terrifies them—everyone Will tell you only what you like to hear.

True, as unwisdom is the worst of ills

For if any man thinks that he is alone is wise--that in speech, or in mind, he hath no peer--such a soul, when laid open, is ever found empty.

Alas! how terrible it is to know, Where no good comes of knowing!

OEDIPUS: Upon the murderer I invoke this curse- whether he is one man and all unknown, or one of many- may he wear out his life in misery to miserable doom! If with my knowledge he lives at my hearth I pray that I myself may feel my curse. On you I lay my charge to fulfill all this for me, for the God, and for this land of ours destroyed and blighted, by the God forsaken.

Oft we know not till we see. Weak is human prophecy. Judge not, till the hour have taught thee What the destinies have brought thee.

Ah! terrible is knowledge to the man Whom knowledge profits not.

What men have seen they know;             but what shall come hereafter             no man before the event can see, 1420    nor what end waits for him.

Wise words; but O, when wisdom brings no profit, To be wise is to suffer.

Of course you cannot know a man completely, his character, his principles, sense of judgment, not till he's shown his colors, ruling the people, making laws. Experience, there's the test.

Seeing nothing, children, knowing nothing, I became your father

A man through wit May pass another's wisdom in the race.

How terrible—to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees! I knew it well, but I put it from my mind, else I never would have come.

None of you knows— and I will never reveal my dreadful secrets, not to say your own.

The truth with all its power lives inside me.

Indeed, if the truth has any power.

No, but I came by, Oedipus the ignorant

But now I have a right to learn from you as you just learned from me.

Creon: You consider it right for a man of my years and experience To go to school to a boy? Haimon: It is not right If I am wrong. But if I am young, and right, What does my age matter?

Pitiful, you suffer so, you understand so much ... I wish you had never known.