Quotes About Knowledge

There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken, themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.

When a king asked Euclid, the mathematician, whether he could not explain his art to him in a more compendious manner? he was answered, that there was no royal way to geometry.

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.

People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

ACROAMATICAL  (ACROAMA'TICAL)   adj.[   Gr. I bear.]Of or pertaining to deep learning; the opposite of exoterical.

The flesh of animals who feed excursively, is allowed to have a higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same difference between men who read as their taste prompts and men who are confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks?

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not.

may, notwithstanding, be questioned whether, except his bible, he ever read a book entirely through. Late in life, if any man praised a book in his presence, he was sure to ask, "Did you read it through?" If the answer was in the affirmative, he did not seem willing to believe it.

Sir," said Imlac, "my history will not be long: the life that is devoted to knowledge passes silently away, and is very little diversified by events.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly be charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.

It is observed that "a corrupt society has many laws;" I know not whether it is not equally true, that "an ignorant age has many books." When the treasures of ancient knowledge lie unexamined, and original authors are neglected and forgotten, compilers and plagiaries are encouraged, who give us again what we had before, and grow great by setting before us what our own sloth had hidden from our view.

The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical.

This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.

He that adopts the sentiments of another whom he has reason to believe wiser than himself is only to be blamed when he claims the honours which are not due but to the author, and endeavours to deceive the world into praise and veneration; for to learn is the proper business of youth; and whether we increase our knowledge by books, or by conversation, we are equally indebted to foreign assistance.

It were to be wished that they who devote their lives to study would at once believe nothing too great for their attainment, and consider nothing as too little for their regard

Nothing has so much exposed men of learning to contempt and ridicule as their ignorance of things which are known to all but themselves.

He that can only converse upon questions about which only a small part of mankind has knowledge sufficient to make them curious must lose his days in unsocial silence, and live in the crowd of life without a companion.

He that has collected his knowledge in solitude must learn its application by mixing with mankind.