Quotes about knowledge and learning

A little learning is a dangerous thing

The proper study of mankind is man.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other

Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application?

Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.

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.

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide

The years teach much which the days never know.

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

He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously—and even himself—only in relation to his pupils.

The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.

One no longer loves one’s knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it.

Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops.

Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.

There are men who put their knowledge in the place of insight.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.

The only way to atone for being occasionally a little overdressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.

In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

ARISTOCRACY, n. Government by the best men. (In this sense the word is obsolete; so is that kind of government.) Fellows that wear downy hats and clean shirts—guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.

CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.

EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.

LEARNING, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

NECTAR, n. A drink served at banquets of the Olympian deities. The secret of its preparation is lost, but the modern Kentuckians believe that they come pretty near to a knowledge of its chief ingredient.

POSITIVISM, n. A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.

REFERENDUM, n. A law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.

RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

If there is a pure love, exempt from the mixture of our other passions, it is that which is concealed at the bottom of the heart and of which even ourselves are ignorant.

To understand matters rightly we should understand their details, and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.

We do not like to praise, and we never praise without a motive. Praise is flattery, artful, hidden, delicate, which gratifies differently him who praises and him who is praised. The one takes it as the reward of merit, the other bestows it to show his impartiality and knowledge.

There are different kinds of curiosity: one springs from interest, which makes us desire to know everything that may be profitable to us; another from pride, which springs from a desire of knowing what others are ignorant of.

What makes us like new studies is not so much the weariness we have of the old or the wish for change as the desire to be admired by those who know more than ourselves, and the hope of advantage over those who know less.

It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last.

The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a second self-love.

There are virtues which degenerate into vices when they arise from Nature, and others which when acquired are never perfect. For example, reason must teach us to manage our estate and our confidence, while Nature should have given us goodness and valour.

As in friendship so in love, we are often happier from ignorance than from knowledge.

The mind attaches itself by idleness and habit to whatever is easy or pleasant. This habit always places bounds to our knowledge, and no one has ever yet taken the pains to enlarge and expand his mind to the full extent of its capacities.

“Knowledge for its own sake”—that is the last snare laid by morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more.

The charm of knowledge would be small, were it not so much shame has to be overcome on the way to it.

The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the “piety”) of the free spirit (the “pious man of knowledge”) than the impia fraus. Hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the Church, characteristic of the type “free spirit”—as ITS non-freedom.

It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author—and that he did not learn it better.

The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on that account he keeps so far away from him:—the devil, in effect, as the oldest friend of knowledge.

In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man.

“Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise”: so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents.

In contemplation as in action, we must distinguish between what may be attained and what is unattainable. Without this, little can be achieved, either in life or in knowledge.

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

What I have tried to do in my life through false tendencies, I have at last learned to understand.

Those from whom we are always learning are rightly called our masters; but not every one who teaches us deserves this title.

In art and knowledge, as also in deed and action, everything depends on a pure apprehension of the object and a treatment of it according to its nature.

When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.

Some one asked Timon about the education of his children. ‘Let them,’ he said, ‘be instructed in that which they will never understand.’

Dilettantism treated seriously, and knowledge pursued mechanically, end by becoming pedantry.

Scholars are generally malignant when they are refuting others; and if they think a man is making a mistake, they straightway look upon him as their mortal enemy.

We are no sooner about to learn some great lesson than we take refuge in our own innate poverty of soul, and yet for all that the lesson has not been quite in vain.

If a man feels no love, he must learn how to flatter; otherwise he will not succeed.

If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.

It is only when a man knows little, that he knows anything at all. With knowledge grows doubt.

We may learn to know the world as we please: it will always retain a bright and a dark side.

At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.

In the matter of knowledge, it has happened to me as to one who rises early, and in the dark impatiently awaits the dawn, and then the sun; but is blinded when it appears.

That is why children’s lives are a series of refined judgments, not to say prejudices; and to efface a rapid but partial perception in order to make way for a more general one, time is necessary. To bear this in mind is one of the teacher’s greatest duties.

We do not learn to know men if they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are.

The most privileged position, in life as in society, is that of an educated soldier. Rough warriors, at any rate, remain true to their character, and as great strength is usually the cover for good nature, we get on with them at need.

There is no outward sign of politeness that will be found to lack some deep moral foundation. The right kind of education would be that which conveyed the sign and the foundation at the same time.

The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.

In the smithy the iron is softened by blowing up the fire, and taking the dross from the bar. As soon as it is purified, it is beaten and pressed, and becomes firm again by the addition of fresh water. The same thing happens to a man at the hands of his teacher.

From this time forward, if a man does not apply himself to some art or handiwork, he will be in a bad way. In the rapid changes of the world, knowledge is no longer a furtherance; by the time a man has taken note of everything, he has lost himself.

The lower animal is taught by its organs; man teaches his organs, and dominates them.

When a great idea enters the world as a Gospel, it becomes an offence to the multitude, which stagnates in pedantry; and to those who have much learning but little depth, it is folly.

Dialectic is the culture of the spirit of contradiction, which is given to man that he may learn to perceive the differences between things.

If a man would enter upon some course of knowledge, he must either be deceived or deceive himself, unless external necessity irresistibly determines him. Who would become a physician if, at one and the same time, he saw before him all the horrible sights that await him?

Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

So long as our scholastic education takes us back to antiquity and furthers the study of the Greek and Latin languages, we may congratulate ourselves that these studies, so necessary for the higher culture, will never disappear.

If we set our gaze on antiquity and earnestly study it, in the desire to form ourselves thereon, we get the feeling as if it were only then that we really became men.

We really learn only from those books which we cannot criticise. The author of a book which we could criticise would have to learn from us.

There is and will be much discussion as to the use and harm of circulating the Bible. One thing is clear to me: mischief will result, as heretofore, by using it phantastically as a system of dogma; benefit, as heretofore, by a loving acceptance of its teachings.

But in popular ballads there is always this advantage, that in the art of saying things shortly uneducated men are always better skilled than those who are in the strict sense of the word educated.

It is said: Artist, study nature! But it is no trifle to develop the noble out of the commonplace, or beauty out of uniformity.

In studying the human form, let the painter reject what is exaggerated, false, and mechanical; but let him learn to grasp of what infinite grace the human body is capable.

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments only give lustre; and many more people see than weigh.

Most arts require long study and application; but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.