Knowledge Quotes

How often ignorance stings less than knowledge.

~ Janny Wurts

Suppose I try saying something. What way do I have of knowing that if I say I know something I don't really not know it? Or what way do I have of knowing that if I say I don't know something I don't really in fact know it?

~ Zhuangzi

The knowledge you acquire in an area of study is accompanied by an incalculable ignorance. The farther we get into anything, we learn that we have even farther to go.

~ Chris Matakas

I crave for knowledge. I envy tolerant, peaceful folks. I am frightened by ignorance. I loathe violence.

~ Tsegaye Gebre Medhin

Fear, ignorance, and hatred - these are the trinity of malice.

~ Debasish Mridha

Ignorance follows knowledge, not the other way around.

~ Stuart Firestein

There is nothing better than not knowing.

~ Markus W. Lunner

You see how I live: shadows and silence, leaving things as I find them because I have no reason to disturb them. But there are things that I have known, even though I never wished to know them and cannot give them a name.

~ Thomas Ligotti

There were some things it was better not to know. They caused metaphysical anguish, for which there was as yet no remedy. When it was worried, the Tribe was inhibited and unable to act.It was very bad for everyone. The Tribe started to produce toxins that poisoned it. Its long-term survival was more important than short-term knowledge of the truth. If an eye had seen something that the brain knew was dangerous for the rest of the organism, it was better for the brain to put out that eye.

~ Bernard Werber

Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.

~ Ray Bradbury

We might not be equal in what we know but we are surely equal, in what we do not know.

~ Pushkar Ganesh Vaidya

Knowledge is a dangerous thing. But ignorance is no protection.

~ Masha Du Toit

We might not be equal in what we know but we are equal in what we do not know.

~ Pushkar Ganesh Vaidya

An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.

~ Will Rogers

Thus identified with astronomy, in proclaiming truths supposed to be hostile to Scripture, Geology has been denounced as the enemy of religion. The twin sisters of terrestrial and celestial physics have thus been joint-heirs of intolerance and persecution—unresisting victims in the crusade which ignorance and fanaticism are ever waging against science. When great truths are driven to make an appeal to reason, knowledge becomes criminal, and philosophers martyrs. Truth, however, like all moral powers, can neither be checked nor extinguished. When compressed, it but reacts the more. It crushes where it cannot expand—it burns where it is not allowed to shine. Human when originally divulged, it becomes divine when finally established. At first, the breath of a rage—at last it is the edict of a god. Endowed with such vital energy, astronomical truth has cut its way through the thick darkness of superstitious times, and, cheered by its conquests, Geology will find the same open path when it has triumphed over the less formidable obstacles of a civilized age.

~ David Brewster

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom,” Viviane said. “Then, when you begin to learn, you will not have to forget all the things you think you know.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know, for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties.

~ Évariste Galois

To turn down knowledge is to resign to ignorance.

~ Kyle Schmalenberg

Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.

~ Enrico Fermi

What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?

~ Henry David Thoreau

Which is the best man to deal with,-he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?

~ Henry David Thoreau

Ignorance is Illiteracy.

~ Ahtesham

Scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussion in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact…

~ Charles Babbage

Politics and Sport were invented to give unknowledgeable people an opportunity to share their knowledge.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It has been said at various points in history that the current sum of humanknowledge is but a fraction of that which was once known, yet now is lost.Likewise, it is argued with simple mathematics that any sum of knowledge wemay yet accrue must always equate to virtually nothing when compared to theinfinity of what is. Apparently our's is a fate of perpetual ignorance. What then is truly lost in the course of human events?(attrib: 'R.I.B. Ushguriud', Note On The Text)

~ Robert Robert

Should the discovery of fire have been avoided because arsonists can misuse it? Any kind of information can be misused by those who are determined to do so. The place to stop the misuse of knowledge is not at the point of inquiry, but at the point of misuse.

~ Arthur R. Jensen

Even one voice in a wilderness of ignorance is a voice that is heard by someone.

~ Kristen Ashley

To be enslaved then, you needed to be ignorant. To be enslaved today, you need to be knowledgeable.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If a faithful account was rendered of man's ideas upon the Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word Gods has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of natural, the source of known causes ceases to be visible: as soon as he loses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by ascribing it to his gods; thus giving a vague definition to an unknown cause, at which either his idleness, or his limited knowledge, obliges him to stop. When, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon, the novelty or the extent of which strikes him with wonder, but of which his ignorance precludes him from unravelling the true cause, or which he believes the natural powers with which he is acquainted are inadequate to bring forth; does he, in fact, do any thing more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe?

~ Paul Henri Thiry D'holbach

stupidity: a process, not a state. A human being takes in far more information than he or she can put out. “Stupidity” is a process or strategy by which a human, in response to social denigration of the information she or he puts out, commits him or herself to taking in no more information than she or he can put out. (Not to be confused with ignorance, or lack of data.) Since such a situation is impossible to achieve because of the nature of mind/perception itself in its relation to the functioning body, a continuing downward spiral of functionality and/or informative dissemination results,’ and he understood why! ‘The process, however, can be reversed,’ the voice continued, ‘at any time.

~ Samuel R. Delany

Knowledge is Power, Power provides Information; Information leads to Education, Education breeds Wisdom; Wisdom is Liberation. People are not liberated because of lack of knowledge.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

A straight face is an ignorant man’s attempt to appear knowledgeable.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I know no such disease of the soul, but ignorance.

~ Ben Johnson

Ah, I see. You don't know much about us and the unknown equals the barbaric, the primitive. Although it is you lot who are ignorant.

~ Andrew Ashling

How much man likes or hates a person or a thing is dependent on how much he knows or does not know about the person or the thing.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

~ Lois Mcmaster Bujold

And, in fine, of false sciences I thought I knew the worth sufficiently to escape being deceived by the professions of an alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, or by the artifices and boasting of any of those who profess to know things of which they are ignorant.

~ René Descartes

It is what we think we know that keeps us from learning.

~ Chester I. Barnard

I do not understand a man who does not want to know all that he can know. Why would anyone choose ignorance? If he chooses ignorance because he is lay, then he is a fool, for the ignorant are put to hard labor digging and hauling stones for masters who tell them they need no knowledge. If a man must labor from dawn to dusk to avoid a blow on the head and to earn a cup of grain, he has no time to gain knowledge and remains a slave to masters. I think, therefore, that is is a worthy vocation to free a man enough that he can learn who he is and what he is capable of, where he came from and what philosophies steer his life.

~ Kate Horsley

God did not mean us to be ignorant. He left us this marvelous universe to decipher and understand.

~ James Targett