Quotes About Knowledge

The world was full of things one needed to know to survive; he didn't have the time to fill his brain with the useless chaff of a patently silly culture.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. MARK TWAIN

We think olden times were simple because we know how grandpa's problems were solved, and any problem is simple when you can look up the answer in the back of the book.

How little, after all, one knew about the people one knew best

you were told the accumulated wisdom of generations who had suffered to acquire their knowledge, and you simply did not believe it. Those difficult rules might be right for other people, but as for yourself, you were going to get what you wanted. You were the center of your own universe and intended to have supremacy in it

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

A writer needs to read almost more than his eyes can bear, to know what is going, & what has gone on.... And a writer needs general knowledge. And a writer needs to write. And a writer needs to live richly with eyes open, & heart, too." —

Ha a jelenben van egy valódi igazság, akkor azt csak az ember hordozhatja. Mert nincsen más, csak ember van.

Another survey revealed that while nine out of ten primary school children could identify a Dalek, only a third could recognise and name a magpie.

There is no religion higher than the truth.

To be afraid is the condition of loving knowledge. Were I not dying of fear, I'd not know how to exist myself, I wouldn't get the notices of existence, I wouldn't record with delight the miniscule passage of a blue tit, its wing dipped in gold on the dusk. Were I not dying of sorrow I wouldn't with nostalgia be present at the creation of the world, the squirrel nuptials this morning I wouldn't care. Creatures are born to a backdrop of adieux.

Writing is writing what you cannot know before you have written: it is preknowing and not knowing, blindly, with words. It occurs at the point where blindness and light meet.

One must have travelled a great deal to discover the obvious. One must have thoroughly rubbed and exhausted one's own eyes to get rid of the thousands of scales we start with...There are poets who have strived to do this...in quest of what I call the second innocence, the one that comes after knowing, the one that no longer knows, the one that knows how not to know.

If one proceeds philosophically before proceeding poetically, and this is central to the philosopher, pleasure is crushed, But if one begins by having pleasure, it is like knowing how to swim: one never forgets it [Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life, trans Elizabeth Lowe & Earl Fitz, Foreword by Hélène Cixous trans Verena Conley, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989].

Intelligence is the art of good guesswork.

Maybe it's a tired tale, but without an education, you're not going to go anywhere.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.

History is a race between education and catastrophe.

Life begins perpetually. Gathered together at last under the leadership of man… unified, disciplined, armed with the secret powers of the atom and with knowledge as yet beyond dreaming, Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars.

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

Fools make researches and wise men exploit them.

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

You can get by on charm for about 15 minutes. After that, you better know something.