Quotes About Knowledge

Although science may ultimately show us how to truly maximize human well-being, it may still fail to

These data are unequivocal: we are building a civilization of ignorance.

The point is that his authority would be derived in the only way that such authority ever is—by making claims about the world that can be corroborated by further observation

If, as I contend throughout this book, all that is good in religion can be had elsewhere—if, for instance, ethical and spiritual experience can be cultivated and talked about without our claiming to know things we manifestly do not know—then all the rest of our religious activity represents, at best, a massive waste of time and energy.

Bertrand Russell

I'm finding that the older I get, it's not that I learn new things, it's more like I find out how much of what I know is common knowledge.

Socrates—were

Knowledge squared is wisdom, and wisdom squared is virtue.

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

It is better for a man to remain silent and appear a fool, then to open his mouth and remove all doubt.

People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.

Sir, there is nothing too little for so little creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own dispositions will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove

Never trust a man who writes more than he reads.

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write.