Quotes About Knowledge

Anthropologist and teacher Margaret Mead said in Redbook magazine in 1963, "If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the University and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one's subject matter.

I was so hungry to learn. My mother drilled this into me. When you read, she said, you know--and you can help yourself and others.

The most crippling part of my personality is that as much as I want to know something, I can't bear admitting I'm ignorant. It's as if I think I should have been born knowing and understanding all. As if when I say out loud, what are you talking about? the world will point and jeer.

Ah—that's the beauty of higher education, sergeant. Never use two simple words when one really complicated one will do.

Unburdened by any medical knowledge, what would they think of Karen's strange ramblings? The answer came quickly enough. They would think she was making it up. What an imagination, they would say. And if it all went a stage further? Would they see this as genuine derangement, as he had done? Probably not. They would say she'd been watching too much telly. Or eating cheese before bedtime.

In a community as small as Badger's Drift, everyone will know what you're about. Someone who has killed once and who thinks he can protect himself by killing a second time will not hesitate to do so. And don't forget'—he turned and they walked together towards the exit—'that if Miss Simpson knew the murderer very well, so do you.

The Mind, once enlightened, cannot again become dark." THOMAS PAINE, Common Sense

You can never have too much information. Gather it in and then sift it, and let the unimportant fall through the small holes.

When a person stops learning, they might as well drop over, graveyard dead." He shrugged. "Learning is what makes life fun.

We write to find out what we didn't know we knew. We write to know deeper and truer. We write to connect the dots: a whole new constellation.

George liked computers and was always sharing interesting facts with her friends.

Even with the high-tech air filtration system in a modern facility, the place still smelled like archival storage: old paper, stale manila folders, cardboard, and dust. Libraries and accountants' basements all over the world smelled like this. It was the scent of information waiting to be discovered.

You know why horror-movie characters always get killed? Because they've never seen horror movies. They don't know how it works. Right? But we do. So no one go into the basement alone. No one go screaming off into the woods alone. No one has any sex.

Lack of subtlety, that's how you beat magic.

There are those who know and those who don't know. And for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who knows. That's the miracle of all time--the fact that these millions know so much but don't know this.

It wasn't like she was lonely and in fact – she had understood it all in every way except with her brain. Now she knew that she knew.

I feels sorrier for him than anybody I knows. I expect he done read more books than any white man in this town. He done read more books and he done worried about more things. He full of books and worrying. He done lost God and turned his back on religion. His troubles come down just to that.

I expect he done read more books than any white man in this town. He done read more books and he done worried about more things. He full of books and worrying. He done lost God and turned his back to religion. All his troubles come down just to that.

I doesn't see my Father much - maybe once a week - but I done a lot of thinking about him. I feels sorrier for him than anybody I knows. I expect he done read more books than any white man in this town. He done read more books and he done worried about more things. He full of books and worrying. He done lost God and turned his back to religion. All his troubles came down just to that.

You see, it's like I'm two people. One of me is an educated man. I been in some of the biggest libraries in the country. I read. I read all the time. I read books that tell the pure honest truth. Over there in my suitcase I have books by Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen and such writers as them. I read them over and over, and the more I study the madder I get.

The professor argues against measuring effectiveness in the shallow short-term in the fierce humanities, for teaching that seeks not merely learning, but unlearning, that seeks to unsettle knowledge and assumptions in ways more fundamental than any exam can or should test.

There was someone called Hippasus in Greek times who found out about the diagonal of a square and they drowned him because no one wanted to know about things like that. Like what? Numbers that make you uncomfortable and don't relate to oranges.

It might also count as an insult to dignity, and a form of infantilization, if the government constantly reminds people of things that they already know.

We know hardly anything about anything.