Quotes about knowledge

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

Publishers, with their usual bravery, dumbed down their books in order to make money at the expense of leaving American children undereducated or, worse, miseducated.

I know nothing of that directly; I only know what I have been told by other young ones who couldn't have known directly either. I want to find out the truth about them and the wanting has grown until there is more of curiosity in me than fear.

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.

Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

I don't like anything that's got to be. I want to know why.

Why, he wondered, did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions—not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?

“You’re not too heavily laden, Professor. What are those documents?”

“Star charts,” he said firmly. “The true treasure of our civilization. A few books too—oh, what a horror it was that we were not able to empty the libraries! For once a book is lost to the ice, a little more of our past is gone forever. But as to my personal effects, my pots and pans, I have my own troop of slave bearers to help me with all that. They are called graduate students.”

Slickness of presentation didn’t imply comprehensiveness of knowledge.

There are some things that no amount of pure intelligence can anticipate, but which can only be learned by bitter experience.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

We are here and it is now: further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.