Knowledge Quotations

Knowledge is what is known; the confident understanding of a subject, potentially with the ability to use it for a specific purpose.

Sourced

Alphabetized by author or work.

Knowledge is discovered, when ignorance is lost.
- Jason F. Klein, "As life is written", Sonoma State University (1992)

Knowledge is power.
- Francis Bacon, Meditationes Sacræ [Sacred Meditations] (1597) "De Hæresibus" [Of Heresies]

I have taken all knowledge to be my province.
- Francis Bacon, letter to Lord Burleigh, 1592

Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches.
- The Bible (KJV), Proverbs 24:3-4

A man who knows how little he knows is well, a man who knows how much he knows is sick.
- Witter Bynner, The Way of Life (1944)

You can't manage knowledge — nobody can. What you can do is to manage the environment in which knowledge can be created, discovered, captured, shared, distilled, validated, transferred, adopted, adapted and applied.
- Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell, Learning to Fly - Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organizations (2005), Chapter 2, pages 24-25.

The Master said, "Yu, shall I teach you what knowledge is? 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."
- Confucius in The Analects 2:17, as translated by Arthur Waley
- Variant translation: "Yu, shall I teach you about knowledge? What you know, you know, what you don't know, you don't know. This is knowledge."

I want to know God's thoughts — the rest are mere details.
- Albert Einstein, as quoted in "Einstein's Unfinished Symphony" at BBC Science & Nature

I owe all my knowledge to the German inventor, Johannes Gutenberg!
- Mehmet ildan, as quoted in "The Theatre Play: Emmanuel Arago's Diary; 2004."

As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.
- Albert Einstein as quoted in Paper Prototyping : The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces (2003) by Carolyn Snyder
- The knowledge that we have can be analogous to a circle. Inside the circle is what we know and what we call knowledge; outside the circle is what we don't know and need to explore. As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it. So the more we know, the more we feel that we don't know.
  - Tian Hao, stating an idea he says had inspired him since childhood, and attributes to Albert Einstein, in Electrorheological Fluids : The Non-aqueous Suspensions (2005), Introduction (15 July 2005), p. v

As we know, There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know, there are known unknowns, that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we do not know we do not know.
- Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense news briefing, 12 February 2002

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
- Albert Einstein, in "What Life Means to Einstein : An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" in The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929)
- Variant: Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

If a man empties his purse into his head no man can take it from him. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
- Ben Franklin, as quoted in Exercises in English Grammar (1909) by M. A. Morse

The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.
- B.B. King, quoted outside the Main Library in uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, in The Charlotte Observer (5 October 1997) Page 2D

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours.
- John Locke, Of the Conduct of the Understanding (1706)

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
- Robert McCloskey, on remarks he made about the Vietnam War as quoted in TV Guide (31 March 1984)

Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.
- H. L. Mencken, in Minority Report (1956)

How can the unknown merit reverence? In other words how can you revere that of which you are ignorant? At the same time, it would be ridiculous to propose that what we know merits reverence. What we know merits any one of a number of things, but it stands to reason reverence isn't one of them. In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
- Harold Pinter in The Homecoming (1966), Lenny to Teddy in Act Two

Rock stars, is there anything they don't know?
- Homer Simpson, The Simpsons, Lisa the Vegetarian, (October 15, 1995)

The more we know, the easier it becomes to admit what we don't know.
- Leonid S. Sukhorukov, All About Everything (2005)

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.
- Mark Twain, Notebook (1908)

For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness.
- Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.
- Mark Twain, in A Tramp Abroad (1880)

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
- Samuel Johnson, The History of Rassselas, Prince of Abissinia.

A little learning is a dangerous thing
- Alexander Pope in Essay on Criticism
- Variant: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

There is no wealth like knowledge; no poverty like ignorance.
- Ali ibn Abi-Talib

Information is random and miscellaneous, but knowledge is orderly and cumulative.
- Daniel Boorstin

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
- Albert Einstein

A knowledge of the path cannot be substituted for putting one foot in front of the other.
- M.C. Richards

No matter how long you teach a fool, he still knows everything.
- Leonid S. Sukhorukov

Knowledge is something I should have that if I knew I wouldn't be as ignorant as I am now.
- Franklin P. Jones

You must understand a thing completely before you can safely ignore it.
- James Geary