Quotes About Knowledge

It is always the same, Mma Makutsi—every time. Exactly the same. So now I know what that guy says without needing to read his book." This was heresy, and for a few moments Mma Makutsi was almost too shocked to respond.

But who doesn't have a lot of unread books? It's nice, though, to know they are there.

But who doesn't have a lot of unread books? It's nice, though, just to know that they're there.

He was one of those people, she thought, who just seemed to know a great deal. And he spoke so wisely, as if had thought for hours about everything he said.

Mma Lentswe looked into her teacup. "Children say these things. They never admit they did anything. I was a teacher, Mma—I know that.

Mushroom people are fond of saying, 'There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.' 

It was perfectly possible to portray scientific knowledge as socially determined – and therefore not true in any real sense – when one was safe on the ground in Paris; but would you ask the same question in a jet aircraft at thirty-five thousand feet, when that same knowledge underpinned the very engineering that was keeping one up in the air?

To dispatch one's friends to a dictionary from time to time is one of the more sophisticated pleasures of life, but it is one that must be indulged in sparingly: to do it too often may result in accusations of having swallowed one's own dictionary, which is not a compliment whichever way one looks at it.

One could never read enough. Never.

Some knowledge is a fish," she muttered. "Some is a serpent.

been able to find out what the really big questions are.

There is a tidal wave of ignorance, Mma Ramotswe. It is a great tidal wave and it will drown all of us if we are not careful.

That sent her friends to the dictionary, which gave her additional satisfaction. To dispatch one's friends to a dictionary from time to time is one of the more sophisticated pleasures of life, but it is one that must be indulged in sparingly: to do it too often may result in accusations of having swallowed one's own dictionary, which is not a compliment, whichever way one looks at it.

Psychology, she thought; that is what they called it these days, but in her view it was something much older than that. It was woman's knowledge, that was what it was; knowledge of how men behaved and how they could be persuaded to do something if one approached the matter in the right way.

That was the problem with being a philosopher: it was not easy. As a philosopher one could not believe in just one thing; one had to explore the possibility that what one thought was true might be false; that what one wanted to believe might not be what one really should hold to be true. So much for the examined life: how uncomfortable it could be. But at least she knew what she wanted for lunch.

And yet, she suddenly wondered, should you actually lie about how much Proust you've read?

He sounds very unworldly," replied Ulf. "From what I heard the other night, he doesn't really know what's going on. He's a philosopher, you see.

Une philosophie du vice Passa pour science des délices

Will I have to use a dictionary to read your book? asked Mrs. Dodypol. It depends, says I, how much you used the dictionary before you read it.

If on a friend's bookshelf You cannot find Joyce or Sterne Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton, You are in danger, face the fact, So kick him first or punch him hard And from him hide behind a curtain.

The best reason for disbelieving in God is that he never gave us enough time in life to pursue enough knowledge to find sufficient truth.

The problem with most people," Dad said once, not necessarily implying that I counted as most people, but not discounting the possibility either, "is that they want to be alive for as long as possible without having any idea whatsoever how to live.

To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.

Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.