It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

I think it is the height of ignorance to believe that the sexual act is an independent function necessary like sleeping or eating. Seeing, therefore, that I did not desire more children, I began to strive after self-control. There was endless difficulty in the task.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

The less you know, the more you believe.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

You can always tell when a man’s well informed. His views are pretty much like your own.

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‚I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.‘

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

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody’s ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the ‚n‘ word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren’t pretty or they weren’t rich or they weren’t clever.

I want to make something that is breathtaking. Of course, you can’t make something that is always breathtaking, or you would never be able to breathe. You would collapse.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive – that you can touch the miracle of being alive – then that is a kind of enlightenment.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self.

We’ve been programmed, from the time that we were very, very little, about what we can’t do – about what is impossible.

Overall there’s going to be things I’m not great at.

The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

The three most powerful and most apparent means used by Rome to retain her power over the minds of her votaries are Ignorance, Superstition, and Persecution.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.

I could do nothing but Brooklyn shows for the rest of my career, and I could die ignorant.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

We all have limitations. I don’t have the right genes to be an Olympic weightlifter. I don’t have the right genetics to be an Olympic sprinter. Or gymnast. Sure, if I trained my whole life, perhaps I could have become fairly decent in those sports.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.