Knowledge Quotes

"The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice."

"The greatest intellectual capacity is the capacity to be puzzled."

"I have never felt surer that a thing was true than I have about the proposition that 2+2=4, yet I have come to learn that mathematics as a whole cannot be said to be known with certainty."

"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."

"Understanding means that sort of comprehension which is more than mere knowledge."

"The crisis of our time is fundamentally a crisis of understanding, not of information."

"Language fails where experience is most profound."

"Knowledge is the recognition of what we cannot know."

"Knowledge of the self begins with knowledge of the other."

"To know another is to participate in their becoming."

"We must empty ourselves completely before we can be filled with truth."

"The mind that has not been emptied cannot be filled with wisdom."

"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge."

"Knowledge is power only when it is guided by wisdom and compassion."

"Knowledge is always incomplete when facing the alterity of the Other."

"Words carry within them the wisdom of countless generations who spoke before us."

"Knowledge without compassion becomes instruments of domination and harm."

"Language fails when it tries to capture the infinite."

"The book contains galaxies of meaning within its silence."

"The mark of true understanding is the multiplication of mysteries."

"Knowledge multiplies as it dissolves into deeper mystery."

"Thinking itself, the questioning activity, is always dangerous to any orthodoxy."

"Plurality means that no one is omniscient; all knowledge is perspectival."

"To understand is to be implicated; there is no innocent knowledge."

"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite of the will to believe."

"The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice."

"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men."

"The most valuable thing a human being can possess is the ability to think for oneself."

"Knowledge and lust are the two great endeavors of mankind."

"Man is the animal condemned to think."