Quotes About Knowledge

It is best not to go on for great quest for truth , it will only make you miserable

For the very fact that my knowledge is increasing little by little is the most certain argument for its imperfection.

reading good books is like engaging in conversation with the most cultivated minds of past centuries who had composed them, or rather, taking part in a well-conducted dialogue in which such minds reveal to us only the best of their thoughts

One should never judge anything unless it is known.

La lecture de tous les bons livres est comme une conversation avec les plus honnêtes gens des siècles passés.

I had become aware, as early as my college days, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible can be imagined, that has not been held by one of the philosophers.

And, in fine, of false sciences I thought I knew the worth sufficiently to escape being deceived by the professions of an alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, or by the artifices and boasting of any of those who profess to know things of which they are ignorant.

The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.

Truths are more likely to have been discovered by one man than by nation

I took especially great pleasure in mathematics because of the certainty and the evidence of its arguments.

The very desire to seek the truth often causes people, who do not know how it should be sought correctly, to make judgements about things that they do not perceive and in that way they make mistakes.

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt

thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that " I," that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is.

All that I have, up to this moment, accepted as possessed of the highest truth and certainty, I received either from or through the senses. I observed, however, that these sometimes misled us; and it is the part of prudence not to place absolute confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.

To attain the truth in life, we must discard all the ideas we were taught.

And even though we have read all the arguments of Plato and Aristotle, we shall never become philosophers if we are unable to make a sound judgement on matters which come up for discussion; in this case what we would seem to have learnt would not be science but history.

the perusal of all excellent books is, as it were, to interview with the noblest men of past ages, who have written them.

For there is hardly any question in the sciences about which clever men have not frequently disagreed. But whenever two persons make opposite judgements about the same thing, it is certain that at least one of them is mistaken, and neither, it seems, has knowledge. For if the reasoning of one of them were certain and evident, he would be able to lay it before the other in such a way as eventually to convince his intellect as well.

Man, being finite in nature can only have knowledge perfectness of which is limited.

I had always a most earnest desire to know how to distinguish the true from the false, in order that I might be able clearly to discriminate the right path in life, and proceed it in with confidence.

I will follow this strategy until I discover something that is certain or, at least, until I discover that it is certain only that nothing is certain.

It is enough that I can understand one thing, clearly and distinctly, without another in order to be certain that one thing is distinct from the other.

Certainly no one can deny that we have such an idea of God in ourselves unless they think that there is no knowledge at all of God in human minds.

Even if all knowledge could be found in books, where it is mixed in with so many useless things and confusingly heaped in such large volumes, it would take longer to read those books than we have to live in this life and more effort to select the useful things than to find them oneself