Quotes About Knowledge

As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate.

The power of thought is the light of knowledge, the power of will is the energy of character, the power of heart is love. Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man.

To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.

To know God and not oneself to be God, to know blessedness and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of disunity or unhappiness.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.

If there were a verb meaning to believe falsely, it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn't absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are.

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.

Always come down from the barren heights of cleverness into the green valleys of folly.

People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them - that does not occur to them.

There is a truth in Schopenhauer's view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say 'Let's get a rough idea', for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.

What is the proof that I know something? Most certainly not my saying I know it.

The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.

Philosophy] must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought.

The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think.

Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?

Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up What's that? - It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said: this is a man, this is a house, etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then?

Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.

Commenting on his Tractatus...It consists of two parts: the one written here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely the 2nd part that is the important one.