Quotes About Knowledge

Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.

Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

By far the best proof is experience.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books." [ Proposition touching Amendment of Laws ]

Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.

For the unlearned man knows not what it is to descend into himself, or to call himself to account, nor the pleasure of that suavissima vita, indies sentire se fieri meliorem. 

The eye of the human understanding is not a naked organ of perception (lumen siccum), but an eye imbued with moisture by Will and Passion. Man always believes what he determines to believe.

For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

God has two textbooks - Scripture and Creation - we would do well to listen to both.

The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or the wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

So if any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied.  And this I take to be a great cause that hath hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passage. 

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

Knowledge itself is power

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning, by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

The punishing of wits enhances their authority.

We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not some books continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, and cities have been decayed and demolished?

La lectura hace al hombre completo; la conversación, ágil, y el escribir, preciso".