An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON KNOWLEDGE 1
A wise man, when asked how he had learned so much about everything, replied: "By never being ashamed or afraid to ask questions about anything of which I was ignorant."
John Abbott (1905-1996, American actor)
''How do you know so much about everything?'' was asked of a very wise and intelligent man; and the answer was ''By never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions as to anything of which I was ignorant.
John Abbott (1905-1996, American actor)
I find that a great part of the information I have, was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.
Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960, American journalist, humorist)
Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719, British essayist, poet, statesman)
Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty.
Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897-1973, American author)
One secures the gold of the spirit when he finds himself.
Claude M. Bristol (1891-1951, American author of "The Magic Of Believing")
Self knowers always dwell in El Dorado; they drink from the fountain of youth, and at all times owners of all they wish to enjoy.
Claude M. Bristol (1891-1951, American author of "The Magic Of Believing")
Real knowledge, like everything else of value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more that all, must be prayed for.
Thomas Arnold (1795-1842, British educator, scholar)
The conqueror and king in each one of us is the knower of truth. Let the knower awaken in us and drive the horses of the mind, emotions, and physical body on the pathway, which that king has chosen.
George S. Arundale (1878-1945, English Theosophist, author and editor)
Self-searching is the means by which we bring new vision, action, and grace to bear upon the dark and negative side of our natures. With it comes the development of that kind of humility that makes it possible for us to receive God's help.... We find that bit by bit we can discard the old life -- the one that did not work -- for a new life that can and does work under conditions whatever.
As Bill Sees It
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992, Russian-born American author)
Be curious always! For knowledge will not acquire you: you must acquire it.
Sudie Back
Knowledge and human power are synonymous.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626, British philosopher, essayist, statesman)
Knowledge is power.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626, British philosopher, essayist, statesman)
The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626, British philosopher, essayist, statesman)
I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945, American humorist, critic, parodist)
I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945, American humorist, critic, parodist)
No one can figure out your worth but you.
Pearl Bailey (1918-1990, American vocalist, movie and stage actress)
There is a period of life when we swallow knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.
Pearl Bailey (1918-1990, American vocalist, movie and stage actress)
There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.
Philip James Bailey (1816-1902, British poet)
Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm pulls the switch.
Ivern Ball
Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all.
Bernard M. Baruch (1870-1965, American financier)
Knowledge is the best eraser in the world for disharmony, distrust, despair, and the endless physical deficiencies of man.
Orlando A. Battista
He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand -- like precious fragments or torsos in a collector's gallery -- in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.
Walter Benjamin (1982-1940, German critic, philosopher)
It is not good to know more unless we do more with what we already know.
R. K. Bergethon
It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.
Claude Bernard (1813-1878, French physiologist)
Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice. Better than knowledge is meditation. But better still is surrender of attachment to results, because there follows immediate peace.
Bhagavad Gita (c. BC 400-, Sanskrit poem incorporated into the Mahabharata)
Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914, American author, editor, journalist, "The Devil's Dictionary")
Knowledge is like money: the more he gets, the more he craves.
Josh Billings (1815-1885, American humorist, lecturer)
The trouble with most folks ain't so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain't so.
Josh Billings (1815-1885, American humorist, lecturer)
In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.
Boethius
The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them.
Henry Bolingbroke (1678-1751, British politician)
The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind.
Francis H. Bradley (1846-1924, British philosopher)
To me, the charm of an encyclopedia is that it knows and I needn't.
Francis Yeats Brown
To do good things in the world, first you must know who you are and what gives meaning in your life.
Paula P. Brownlee
To know the right means of getting something done is virtually to have done it.
Mark Caine
Prayer, like radium, is a luminous and self-generating form of energy.
Dr. Alexis Carrel (1873-1944, French biologist)
Make it your business to know yourself -- which is the most difficult lesson in the world.
Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616, Spanish novelist, dramatist, poet)
We are the same people as we were at three, six, ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so, perhaps, at six or seven, because we were not pretending so much then.
Agatha Christie (1891-1976, British mystery writer)
We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832, British sportsman writer)
No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924, Polish-born British novelist)
To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
Albert Camus (1913-1960, French existential writer)
The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.
Elias Canetti (1905-1994, Austrian novelist, philosopher)
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.
Sandara Carey
A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.
Carlos Castaneda (1925-, American anthropologist, author)
I shall be an autocrat, that's my trade; and the good Lord will forgive me, that's his.
Catherine The Great
To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it -- this is a hard lesson.
Bruce Catton (American author)
Never say you will pray about a thing; pray about it.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917, Scottish preacher, author)
It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind's dignity.
William Ellery Channing (1780-1842, American Unitarian minister, author)
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield (1694-1773, British statesman, author)
Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield (1694-1773, British statesman, author)
One may understand the Cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936, British author)
A man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool.
Chuang Tzu (c 369 BC-286 BC, Chinese philosopher)
Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Marcus T. Cicero (c. 106-43 BC, Roman orator, politician)
The precept, "Know yourself," was not solely intended to obviate the pride of mankind; but likewise that we might understand our own worth.
Marcus T. Cicero (c. 106-43 BC, Roman orator, politician)
He that knows himself, knows others; and He that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832, British sportsman writer)
Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857, French founder of Positivist Philosophy)
The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.
Confucius (BC 551-479, Chinese ethical teacher, philosopher)
To know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
Confucius (BC 551-479, Chinese ethical teacher, philosopher)
You can't know too much, but you can say too much.
Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933, American President (30th))
Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; Wisdom is humble that it knows no more.
William Cowper (1731-1800, British poet)
To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
Quentin Crisp (1908-1999, British author)
You have to believe in God before you can say there are things that man was not meant to know. I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do.
David Cronenberg (1943-, Canadian filmmaker)
Knowledge is not a passion from without the mind, but an active exertion of the inward strength, vigor and power of the mind, displaying itself from within.
Ralph J. Cudworth (1617-1688, British theologian, philosopher)
Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.
EE Cummings (1894-1962, American poet)
The knowledge of past times and of places on the earth is both an ornament and nourishment to the human mind.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519, Italian inventor, architect, painter, scientist, sculptor)
Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917, French painter, sculptor)
Search not to find things too deeply hid; nor try to know things whose knowledge is forbid.
Sir John Denham (1615-1668, British poet, dramatist)
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784, French philosopher)
Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows that they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest.
Isak Dinesen (1885-1962, American author)
Depend upon it, there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930, British author, "Sherlock Holmes")
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
Peter F. Drucker (1909-, American-Austrian management consultant)
Today, knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
Peter F. Drucker (1909-, American-Austrian management consultant)
Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
William J. Durant (1885-1981, American historian, essayist)
A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.
Meister Eckhart (1260-1326, German mystic)
The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.
Meister Eckhart (1260-1326, German mystic)
We don't know one-millionth of one percent about anything.
Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931, American inventor, founder of GE)
It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.
Epictetus (50-138, Phrygian philosopher)
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, "Know thyself," and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.
George Eliot (1819-1880, British novelist)
Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.
George Eliot (1819-1880, British novelist)
I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
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