"Famous Quotes By Topic"

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. (1900 - 1965), speech at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 8, 1952

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Metaphysics

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), Sybil, 1845

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge.

Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects

Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849), Berenice

It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

Enrico Fermi (1901 - 1954)

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

Frank Herbert (1920 - 1986)

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.

Lao-tzu (604 BC - 531 BC), The Way of Lao-tzu

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.

Margaret Fuller (1810 - 1850)

Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.

Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988), Letter to Armando Garcia J, December 11, 1985

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)

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

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson

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.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson

Knowledge is power.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626), Religious Meditations, Of Heresies, 1597

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC)

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC), from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Knowledge must come through action; you can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.

Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC), Trachiniae

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