Quotes About Knowledge

Just to see my books, to note their presence, their proximity to other books, fills me with a sense of futurity.

You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.

Even in the most authentic documentary there is always a fictional person—the person telling the story. I have never created a more fictional character than the researching "I" in my doctorate, a self that begins in pretended ignorance and then slowly arrives at knowledge, not at all in the fitful, chancy way I myself arrived at it, but step by step, proof by proof, according to the rules.

while those who presume to teach philosophy without that God-revealed knowledge, however well-meaning their endeavor, succeed, for the most part, in engendering only doubt and confusion in the world.

The older I get, the less I know. It's wonderful--it makes the world so spacious.

Achievements are not earned through proficiency alone. They are in fact rewards of our efficiency. Proficiency is gathered knowledge, while efficiency is the ability to translate the knowledge into action.

What man needs is not philosophy or religion in the academic or formalistic sense of the term, but ability to think rightly. The malady of the age is not absence of philosophy or even irreligion but wrong thinking and a vanity which passes for knowledge. Though it is difficult to define right thinking, it cannot be denied that it is the goal of the aspirations of everyone.

One must know one's own secret.

stories in this book represent only the tip of the iceberg.

Knowledge is inherent in man; no knowledge comes from outside; it is all inside. We say Newton discovered gravitation. Was it sitting anywhere waiting for him? It was in his own mind; the time came and he found it out. All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind. The external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to study your own mind.

Shri Ramakrishna use to say, "As Long as I Live, so long do I learn". That man or that society which has nothing to learn is already in the jaws of death.

Do not believe a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for yourself. Reason it out. That is realization.

All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.

The knowing ones must have pity on the ignorant. One who knows is willing to give up his body even for an ant, because he knows that the body is nothing.

Do not believe in a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe in a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for yourself. Reason it out. That is realization.

The goal of mankind is knowledge. That is the one ideal placed before us by Eastern philosophy. Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal.

But where the ignorant are asleep, there the sage keeps awake

No knowledge comes from outside; it is all inside. What we say a man "knows", should, in strict psychological language, be what he "discovers" or "unveils"; what a man "learns" is really what he "discovers", by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

What is now wanted is a combination of the greatest heart with the highest intellectuality, of infinite love with infinite knowledge.

We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth, until we experience it ourselves.

To the Hindu, says Vivekananda, "Man is not travelling from error to truth, but climbing up from truth to truth, from truth that is lower to truth that is higher.

If there is something here that is not in the Vedas, that is your delusion. It does not exist.

The sages of the world have only the right to tell us that they have analysed their minds and have found these facts, and if we do the same we shall also believe, and not before.

Even if you have knowledge, do not disturb the childlike faith of the ignorant. On the other hand, go down to their level and gradually bring them up (note 30). That is a very powerful idea, and it has become the ideal in India. That is why you can see a great philosopher going into a temple and worshipping images. It is not hypocrisy.