Quotes About Knowledge

If to know is to work, then knowledge is the fruit of our own unaided effort and activity; then knowledge includes nothing which is not due to the effort of man, and there is nothing gratuitous about it, nothing "inspired", nothing "given" about it.

The delight we take in our senses is an implicit desire to know the ultimate reason for things, the highest cause. The desire for wisdom that philosophy etymologically is is a desire for the highest or divine causes. Philosophy culminates in theology. All other knowledge contains the seeds of contemplation of the divine.

Porque la experiencia es eso: una triste riqueza que solo sirve para saber cómo se debería haber vivido, pero no para vivir nuevamente.

Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world and ignorance of mankind.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.

It is the duty of all who make philosophy the entertainment of their lives, to turn their thoughts to practical schemes for the good of society, and not pass away their time in fruitless searches, which tend rather to the ostentation of knowledge than the service of life.

I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasures and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves and useful to the world.

The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.

Reading to the mind is what exercise is to the body.

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

You were in heaven, but all the mysteries of heaven had not been revealed to you, and you knew worthless ones, and these in the hardness

Those who follow or "worship" the path of selfishness and pleasure (Avidya), without knowing anything higher, necessarily fall into darkness; but those who worship or cherish Vidya (knowledge) for mere intellectual pride and satisfaction, fall into greater darkness, because the opportunity which they misuse is greater.

Had we been choosing our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth…. I believe… that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens, to shoot his like in the name of some idea is more problematic than for someone who has read no Dickens.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Man is what he reads.

Librarians. . . have been my lifelong friends, guides and heroes.

I don't have to have faith, I have experience.

Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.

Learn and think imperially.

Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.

Christianity is preached by the ignorant and believed by the learned. And in this way is like no other thing.