Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

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

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind – this attitude of uncertainty – is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

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.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

I only see clearly what I remember.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

Too much of what is called ‚education‘ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.

There are four Powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.

Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time… I think I’ve forgotten this before.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

The less you know, the more you believe.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

My recollection is – and I’d have to confirm this – but I don’t recall paying any money to go to law school.

I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money! Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

We do not know where to look, or what to look for, when something is memorized. We do not know what it means, or what change there is in the nervous system, when a fact is learned. This is a very important problem which has not been solved at all.

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

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.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker – yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Every time I hear a politician mention the word ‚stimulus,‘ my mind flashes back to high school biology class, when I touched battery wires to a dead frog to make it twitch.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.