Quotes about knowledge

One test of un homme sérieux is that it is possible to learn from him even when one radically disagrees with him.

There is too much knowledge already in the world; we use facts as crutches, to the impoverishment of our senses. Facts are falsehoods; logic is deceit. I know a single system of communication: the declaiming of poetry.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit—well, intense? Are people really interested in these matters?”

“If not they should be.”

“Easily said, but it’s no way to run a magazine. People don’t want to really understand anything; they want to think they have learned without the necessity of application.”

Motto of the Institute: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a great deal of knowledge is disaster, which detractors of the Institute scornfully paraphrase to: Somebody else’s ignorance is bliss.

Time, and Industry, produce everyday new knowledge.

The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History.

Desire, to know why, and how, CURIOSITY; such as is in no living creature but Man; so that Man is distinguished, not only by his Reason; but also by this singular Passion from other Animals; in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of Sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes; which is a Lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of Knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal Pleasure.

Of all Discourse, governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End, either by attaining, or by giving over.

Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn't the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

He was too good a soldier to go around asking questions, trying to round out his knowledge.

A soldier's knowledge wasn't supposed to be round.