50 Inspiring Quotes About Knowledge to Enlighten Your Mind

"In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."

- Henry Ford

"The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you."

- BB King

"Research shows that you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius."

- Michael J. Gelb

"You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way."

- Marvin Minsky

"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way."

- Doris Lessing

"One hour per day of study in your chosen field is all it takes. One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years you’ll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do."

- Earl Nightingale

"Change is the end result of all true learning."

- Leo Buscaglia

"True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own."

- Nikos Kazantzakis

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible."

- Richard Feynman

"Knowledge itself is power."

- Francis Bacon

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence."

- Albert Einstein

"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it."

- Margaret Fuller

"To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge."

- Socrates

"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."

- Chinese Proverb

"True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us."

- Socrates

"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it."

- Albert Einstein

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

- Socrates

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

- Isaac Newton

"One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things."

- Frank Herbert

"Knowledge is love and light and vision."

- Helen Keller

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

- Confucius

"Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow."

- Anthony J. D'Angelo

"Learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn."

- Peter Drucker

"There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Having knowledge but lacking the power to express it clearly is no better than never having any ideas at all."

- Pericles

"Knowledge is a weapon. I intend to be formidably armed."

- Terry Goodkind

"The greatest enemy of progress is the illusion of knowledge."

- John Young

"Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty."

- Jacob Bronowski

"I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice."

- Anton Chekhov

"It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience."

- Immanuel Kant

"Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."

- Nicolaus Copernicus

"If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability."

- Henry Ford

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn."

- Benjamin Franklin

"All men by nature desire knowledge."

- Aristotle

"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge."

- Plato

"Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing."

- Warren Buffett

"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."

- Benjamin Franklin

"No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience."

- John Locke

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."

- Confucius

"Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family."

- Kofi Annan

"Learn continually. There’s always ‘one more thing’ to learn!"

- Steve Jobs

"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today."

- Malcolm X

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

- Alvin Toffler

"He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger."

- Confucius

"If knowledge is power, then learning is a superpower."

- Jim Kwik

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go."

- Dr. Seuss

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest."

- Confucius

"Learning without thinking is useless. Thinking without learning is dangerous."

- Confucius

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

- Thomas Jefferson

"What we learn with pleasure we never forget."

- Alfred Mercier

"Never let formal education get in the way of your learning."

- Mark Twain

"The most important attitude that can be found is the desire to go on learning."

- John Dewey

"Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it."

- Alan Moore

"All the world is my school and all humanity is my teacher."

- George Whitman

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."

- Voltaire

"The greatest teacher, failure is."

- Yoda

"If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking."

- Buckminster Fuller

"Mankind has a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it."

- Samuel Johnson

"Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements — transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting — profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

- Carl Sagan

"Learning is synthesizing seemingly divergent ideas and data."

- Terry Heick

"I never learned from a man who agreed with me."

- Robert A. Heinlein

"You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over."

- Richard Branson

"You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives."

- Clay P. Bedford

"The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue."

- Antisthenes

"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live."

- Mortimer Adler

"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily."

- Thomas Szasz

"The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows."

- Sydney J. Harris

"You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it."

- John Updike

"There is divine beauty in learning… To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps."

- Elie Wiesel

"Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning."

- William Arthur Ward

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

- John F. Kennedy

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."

- Robert Frost

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

- W.B. Yeats

"Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardour and attended with diligence."

- Abigail Adams

"Everything is a learning experience."

- Angus T. Jones

"Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection."

- Mark Twain

"The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one."

- Malcolm Forbes

"Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"

- Albert Einstein

"He who laughs most, learns best."

- John Cleese

"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon."

- E. M. Forster

"Learning requires actual work."

- William Crawford

"If you think education is expensive, try estimating the cost of ignorance."

- Howard Gardner

"The great aim of education is not knowledge but action."

- Herbert Spencer

"Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Education without application is just entertainment."

- Tim Sanders

"I am still learning."

- Michelangelo

"Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key."

- Tom Colicchio

"The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly."

- Wendell Berry

"It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning."

- Claude Bernard

"It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts."

- Harry S. Truman

"When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new."

- Dalai Lama

"The more extensive the knowledge of what has been done, the greater the power of knowing what to do."

- Benjamin Disraeli

"If we knew what we were doing, we wouldn’t call it research."

- Albert Einstein

"They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance."

- Terry Pratchett

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason."

- Immanuel Kant

"We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge."

- John Naisbitt

"There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination."

- Denis Diderot

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."

- Albert Einstein

"Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future."

- Brian Tracy

"The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant."

- Richard Cecil

"Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven."

- William Shakespeare

"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it."

- Margaret Fuller

"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes."

- Peter Drucker

"Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power."

- Horace Mann

"We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn."

- Mary Catherine Bateson

"The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come."

- C.S. Lewis

"A little learning is a dangerous thing."

- Alexander Pope

"I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught."

- Winston Churchill

"Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite."

- Karl Popper

"The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery."

- Anais Nin

"Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Those who predict, don't have knowledge."

- Lao Tzu

"Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom."

- Charles Spurgeon

"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."

- Marilyn vos Savant

"We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance."

- John Archibald Wheeler

"Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul."

- Will Durant

"Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

- T. S. Eliot

"Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value."

- Louis L'Amour

"We don't know all the answers. If we knew all the answers we'd be bored, wouldn't we? We keep looking, searching, trying to get more knowledge."

- Jack LaLanne

"I'm hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That's what this world is about. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that's from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter."

- Jay-Z

"Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge."

- Dante Alighieri

"The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance."

- Herodotus

"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way."

- Thomas Jefferson

"The progress of mankind depends in large measure upon new ideas, and the rate of this progress in turn depends largely upon the speed with which the ideas are disseminated."

- George Gallup

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

- Niels Bohr

"The strongest human instinct is to impart information. The second strongest is to resist it."

- Kenneth Grahame

"Only the educated are free."

- Epictetus

"A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."

- Mark Twain

"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."

- Marcus Garvey

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts."

- Daniel Patrick Moynihan

"The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder."

- Ralph W. Sockman

"Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile."

- Abu Bakr

"Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility."

- Robin Morgan

"No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience."

- John Locke

"Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also."

- Carl Jung

"A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting."

- Carlos Castaneda

"It is harder to conceal ignorance than to acquire knowledge."

- Arnold H. Glasow

"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading."

- David Bailey

"I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about."

- Arthur C. Clarke

"The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes."

- Avicenna

"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge."

- Plato

"The wise person doesn't give the right answers, but poses the right questions."

- Claude Levi-Strauss

"Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance."

- Plato

"Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave."

- George Gurdjieff

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

- Hippocrates

"The true method of knowledge is experiment."

- William Blake

"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing."

- Warren Buffett

"Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge."

- Simone Weil

"All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less."

- Arthur Miller

"The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people."

- Tom Clancy

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

- Marcel Proust

"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."

- Carl Sagan

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits."

- Albert Einstein

"Information wants to be free, but value wants to be paid for."

- Doc Searls

"If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic."

- Barry Jones

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."

- A.A. Milne

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

- John F. Kennedy

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."

- Lao Tzu

"Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse."

- Zhuangzi

"Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again."

- Vincent van Gogh

"I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Humility and knowledge in poor clothes excel pride and ignorance in costly attire."

- William Penn

"Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."

- Flannery O'Connor

"The expert in anything was once a beginner."

- Helen Hayes

"A man who asks is a fool for five minutes. A man who never asks is a fool for life."

"Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back."

"If you are willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you."

"The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data.’"