Quotes about knowledge

No, this tremendous amount of knowledge, collected and preserved by successive generations of wise Brahmins, could not be easily overlooked. But where were the Brahmins, the wise men, the priests who were successful in not only having this most profound knowledge, but in living it?

Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value.

Let us lament as over stomachs, over minds which do not eat. If there is anything more poignant than a body agonising for want of bread, it is a soul which is dying of hunger for light.

Blessed is he who has been able to win knowledge of the causes of things.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.

"Knowledge?" said the doctor. "Yes, I suppose that is it. For ever and for ever seeking knowledge. And we don't even know why we seek it. It's an instinct, like self-preservation; and about as comprehensible. Why, I wonder, do I keep on living. I know I've got to die sooner or later, yet I take the best care I can that it shall be later instead of finishing the thing off in a reasonable manner. After all, I've done my bit—propagated my species, and yet for some inscrutable reason I want to go on living and learning. Just an instinct. Some kink in the evolutionary process caused this passion for knowledge, and the result is man—an odd little creature, scuttling around and piling up mountains of this curious commodity.

What do you suppose will happen when one day a man sits back in his chair and says: 'Knowledge is complete'? You see, it just sounds silly. We're so used to collecting it, that we can't imagine a world where it is all collected and finished."

A man who, at the age of five-and-twenty, knows nothing and wishes to learn everything, is bound to make the best use of his time. Not knowing at what point destiny or death might arrest my zeal, I desired, in any case, to get an idea of everything, in order to discover the special bent of my natural abilities, and also to judge for myself what was worthy of cultivation.

Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained. It is like a system of bridges built over chasms. One can travel boldly ahead over these bridges, ignoring the chasms. It is forbidden to look down into them; but that, alas, does not alter the fact that they exist.

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.

There is a way in which the collective knowledge of mankind expresses itself, for the finite individual, through mere daily living: a way in which life itself is sheer knowing.

“How can the answer to today’s questions be in such an old book?”

“The answers to almost all of today’s questions can be found in old books,” Smyke retorted. “If you want to find out, look them up. If not, forget it.”