Quotes on Knowledge

Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God.

For authority proceeds from true reason, but reason certainly does not proceed from authority. For every authority which is not upheld by true reason is seen to be weak, whereas true reason is kept firm and immutable by her own powers and does not require to be confirmed by the assent of any authority.

What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?

Reason in man is rather like God in the world.

For knowing is spoken of in three ways: it may be either universal knowledge or knowledge proper to the matter in hand or actualising such knowledge; consequently three kinds of error also are possible.

If you know anything better than this candidly impart it; if not, use this with me.

It is well for one to know more than he says.

Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

A real medicine can only exist when it penetrates into a knowledge which embraces the human being in respect to body, soul and spirit.

You can practice to attain knowledge, but you can't practice to attain wisdom.

The best prescription is knowledge.

In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.

For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness.

Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.

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

The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.

And what word is knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.