Quotes About Knowledge

Knowledge itself is power.

— Francis Bacon

Knowledge is power, if you know the right person.

— Ethel Watts Mumford

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

— Henry Miller

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

— Samuel Johnson

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.

— Robert Quillen

Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns.

— John Maurice Clark

The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

— John F. Kennedy

We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Just in ratio as knowledge increases, faith diminishes.

— Thomas Carlyle

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us.  The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

The acquisition of knowledge is the mission of research, the transmission of knowledge is the mission of teaching, and the application of knowledge is the mission of public service.

— James A. Perkins

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one great thing.

— Archilochus, seventh century B.C.

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously.  The first is imperative and second is disastrous.

— Margot Fonteyn

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.

— Daniel J. Boorstin

Knowing others is wisdom.  Knowing the self is enlightenment.

— Lao-tzu

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

— William Blake

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

— Samuel Johnson

Knowledge which is obtained under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

— Plato

Tim was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.

— Benjamin Franklin

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

— Thomas Henry Huxley

Reality is a collective hunch.

— Mel Seesholtz

Read More

Quotes About Intelligence

It has yet to be proved that intelligence has any survival value.

— Arthur C. Clarke

The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing—to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.

— John Keats

There is no greater excitement than to support an intellectual wife and have her support you.  Marriage is a partnership in which each inspires the other, and brings fruition to both of you.

— Millicent Carey McIntosh

The only difference between intelligence and education is this: intelligence will make you a good living.

— Charles F. Kettering

To the dull mind all nature is leaden.  To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We pay a high price for being intelligent.  Wisdom hurts.

— Euripides

He’s very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head.

— Margot Asquith

The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.

— Samuel Johnson

The height of cleverness is to conceal one’s cleverness.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows.

— Havelock Ellis

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

— Anthony Hope Hawkins

No one is content with his fortune, nor discontent with his intellect.

— Madame Antoinette Deshoulieres

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

— G. K. Chesterton

Read More

Quotes About Insanity

Insanity is a matter of degree.

— Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.

— Erich Fromm

Dr. Karl Menninger was once asked what action he would recommend if a person were to feel a nervous breakdown coming on.  “Lock up your house,” the famous psychiatrist advised, “go across the railroad tracks, and find someone in need and do something for him.”

The inmates are ghosts whose dreams have been murdered.

— Jill Johnson, about Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric wards

We’re all controlled neurotics.

— Harry Reasoner

There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. . . . Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them.  If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.

— Joseph Heller

There is always some madness in love.  But there is also always some reason in madness.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Sometimes accidents happen in life from which we have need of a little madness to extricate ourselves successfully.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

What is madness?  To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.

— Voltaire

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

— Hermann Hesse

There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell.

— G. K. Chesterton

We are all born mad.  Some remain so.

— Samuel Beckett

The human race consists of the dangerously insane and such as are not.

— Mark Twain

Every man has a sane spot somewhere.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Insanity is hereditary—you get it from your children.

— Sam Levenson

That’s the truest sign of insanity—insane people are always sure they’re just fine.  It’s only the sane people who are willing to admit they’re crazy.

— Nora Ephron

Read More

Quotes About Ignorance and Stupidity

No human folly can suppress the conceit of ignorance.

— Charles Victor Roman

The realization of ignorance is the first act of knowing.

— Jean Toomer

Violence is a tool of the ignorant.

— Flip Wilson

Fear always springs from ignorance.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I would rather have my ignorance than another man’s knowledge, because I have so much of it.

— Mark Twain

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.

— Eric Hoffer

From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise.

— Matthew Prior

Ignorance is the womb of monsters.

— Henry Ward Beecher

Ignorance is the night of the mind, a night without moon or star.

— Confucius

Ignorance is not bliss—it is oblivion.

— Philip Wylie

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

He was born stupid and greatly improved his birthright.

— Samuel Butler

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

— Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

— Oscar Wilde

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition, and incompetence.

— Elbert Hubbard

Read More

Quotes About Identity

Financially stable, mentally questionable.

— Motto of the Gotham City Riders, an upscale New York City motorcycle gang

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

— Agnes Repplier

How queer everything is today!  And yesterday things went on just as usual.  I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night?  Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning?  I almost think I can remember feeling a little different.  But if I’m not the same, the next question is, “Who in the world am I?”  Ah, that’s the great puzzle!

— Lewis Carroll

Knowing others is wisdom.  Knowing the self is enlightenment.

— Lao-tzu

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline: the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.

— Abraham J. Heschel

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

— Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel

If you practice an art, be proud of it and make it proud of you. . . . It may break your heart, but it will fill your heart before it breaks it: it will make you a person in your own right.

— Maxwell Anderson

Every man has three characters—that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.

— Alphonse Karr

Conform and be dull.

— James Frank Dobie

Men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.

— David Riesman

Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

— Archibald MacLeish

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.

— Henry David Thoreau

Everyone alters and is altered by everyone else.  We are all the time taking in portions of one another or else reacting against them, and by these involuntary acquisitions and repulsions modifying our natures.

— Gerald Brenan

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

— Mark Twain

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

— Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.

— Max Lerner

 “Know thyself” is a good saying, but not in all situations.  In many it is better to say “know others.”

— Menander

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

— Thomas Paine

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained.

— John Stuart Mill

The Kingdom of God is within you.

— Luke 17:21

Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets.  I do not mean his maker, but himself.

— Dean William R. Inge

In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others.

— John Stuart Mill

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself.  But the self is not something that one finds.  It is something that one creates.

— Thomas Szasz

If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.

— Claude McKay

One man’s way may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best.

— Jane Austen

A man finds his identity by identifying.  A man’s identity is not best thought of as the way in which he is separated from his fellows but the way in which he is united with them.

— Robert Terwilliger

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

— Alan Watts

Character is made by what you stand for; reputation, by what you fall for.

— Robert Quillen

Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.

— Yousuf Karsh

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously.  The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

— Margot Fonteyn

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Elegance is innate.  It has nothing to do with being well dressed.  Elegance is refusal.

— Diana Vreeland

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or “get rich” in business by being a conformist.

— J. Paul Getty

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

— Eric Hoffer

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

— George Bernard Shaw

Don’t compromise yourself.  You’re all you’ve got.

— Janis Joplin

When you’ve got the personality, you don’t need the nudity.

— Mae West

Read More

Quotes About Ideas

The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction.  Men are mortal; but ideas are immortal.

— Walter Lippmann

You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against a barrack square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build.

— Sean O’Casey

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in the villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

— Theodore H. White

The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted idea is worth a fortune to somebody.

— George Francis Fitzgerald

You can’t shoot an idea.

— Thomas E. Dewey

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.  Ideas have endurance without death.

— John F. Kennedy

A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on.

— William McFee

A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.

— Victor Hugo

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world; an idea whose time has come.

— Victor Hugo

An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

— Oscar Wilde

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation.

— William James

All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.

— Grant Wood

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

When forty million people believe in a dumb idea, it’s still a dumb idea.

— Ad run by United Technologies Corporation

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.  Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.

— Albert Camus

Read More