Quotes about knowledge
On learning, books, curiosity and knowing what you don’t know. Quotes from scholars, scientists and essayists, each with the work it comes from.
The library has 1,343 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 quotes about knowledge
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Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Confucius Analects, II.15 · translated by James Legge -
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused.
William Shakespeare Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 4 -
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
William Shakespeare Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 3 -
Know then this truth (enough for man to know),—“Virtue alone is happiness below.”
Alexander Pope Essay on Man. Epistle iv, Line 309 -
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William Shakespeare Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2 -
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good. Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
William Wordsworth Personal Talk, Stanza 3 -
You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come; Knock as you please, there’s nobody at home.
Alexander Pope Epigram -
Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies, And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
Alexander Pope The Wife of Bath. Her Prologue, Line 369 -
Good reasons must of force give place to better.
William Shakespeare Julius Caesar, iv. 3 -
He who knows other men is discerning; he who knows himself is intelligent. He who overcomes others is strong; he who overcomes himself is mighty.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 33 · translated by James Legge -
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. I -
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.
Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism, Part ii. Line 15 -
Minds that have nothing to confer Find little to perceive.
William Wordsworth Yes, Thou art Fair -
A man who has learnt little, grows old like an ox; his flesh grows, but his knowledge does not grow.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 152 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Through zeal knowledge is gotten, through lack of zeal knowledge is lost; let a man who knows this double path of gain and loss thus place himself that knowledge may grow.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 282 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.
Edward Young Love of Fame, Satire i. Line 89 -
Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book V.16 · translated by George Long -
Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds see all and are not even hurt.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 357 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
William Wordsworth Lines written in Early Spring -
Knowledge is as food, and needs no less Her temp’rance over appetite, to know In measure what the mind may well contain; Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns Wisdom to folly.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. vii., Line 126 -
When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.
Walter Scott -
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.
Francis Bacon Of Atheism -
Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give, And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!
William Wordsworth Ode to Duty -
Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls.
Thomas Carlyle Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838 -
’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print; A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t.
Lord Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Line 51 -
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
Francis Bacon Of Studies -
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
William Cowper The Task, Bk. VI -
Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books.
William Cowper The Task: Winter Walk at Noon -
When a man is not in the habit of saying—“What shall I think of this? What shall I think of this?” I can indeed do nothing with him!
Confucius Analects, XV.15 · translated by James Legge -
When a man sees a phenomenon before him, his thoughts often range beyond it; when he hears it only talked about, he has no thoughts at all.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Science, No. 533 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
The finest achievement for a man of thought is to have fathomed what may be fathomed, and quietly to revere the unfathomable.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Science, No. 577 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
To err is to be as though truth did not exist. To lay bare the error to oneself and others is retrospective discovery.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Science, No. 524 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
The world does not know that we must all come to an end here; but those who know it, their quarrels cease at once.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 6 · translated by F. Max Müller -
The land of scholars and the nurse of arms.
Oliver Goldsmith The Traveller, Line 356 -
If I know my relation to myself and the outer world, I call it truth. Every man can have his own peculiar truth; and yet it is always the same.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Life and Character, No. 163 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely everything and people who know absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Examinations are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman whatever he knows is bad for him.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Not a mother, not a father will do so much, nor any other relative; a well-directed mind will do us greater service.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 43 · translated by F. Max Müller -
The ‘Peerage’ is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
To know anything about oneself one must know all about others.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
I never thought he had more than average ability when we were young men together. But, then, I suppose he thought just the same about me.
Abraham Lincoln January 24 -
In the Book of Poetry are three hundred pieces, but the design of them all may be embraced in one sentence—“Having no depraved thoughts.”
Confucius Analects, II.2 · translated by James Legge -
A scholar, whose mind is set on truth, and who is ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with.
Confucius Analects, IV.9 · translated by James Legge -
I didn’t know anything about it, but I thought you knew your own business best.
Abraham Lincoln January 11 -
Learn to say No! and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.
Charles Spurgeon -
When we want to think of God, is there nothing which turns us away, and tempts us to think of something else? All this is bad, and is born in us.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 478 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.
Francis Bacon Essays -
Not that a man cannot boast of wealth or knowledge, but it is not the place for pride; for in granting to a man that he is learned, it is easy to convince him that he is wrong to be proud.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 460 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
Alfred Tennyson Locksley Hall, Line 141 -
I would then lead man to the desire of finding truth; to be free from passions, and ready to follow it where he may find it, knowing how much his knowledge is obscured by the passions.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 423 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
One thought alone occupies us; we cannot think of two things at the same time. This is lucky for us according to the world, not according to God.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 145 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.
Francis Bacon -
There is an originating and all-comprehending principle in my words, and an authoritative law for the things which I enforce. It is because they do not know these, that men do not know me.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 70.2 · translated by James Legge -
Every great mind seeks to labour for eternity. All men are captivated by immediate advantages; great minds alone are excited by the prospect of distant good.
Friedrich Schiller -
To know and yet think we do not know is the highest attainment; not to know and yet think we do know is a disease.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 71.1 · translated by James Legge -
The sage has no invariable mind of his own; he makes the mind of the people his mind.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 49.1 · translated by James Legge -
Deep vers’d in books, and shallow in himself.
John Milton Paradise Regained, Book iv. Line 327 -
We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster.
Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson -
The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists