Philosophy quotes about knowledge

What I do not know, I do not claim to know.

No one errs willingly.

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I do not know.

What do I know?

Once in a lifetime, everything must be doubted.

The world is my representation.

Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

To know, in order to foresee, so as to be able to act.

Rebellion cannot do without the notion of a limit — it stops at human dignity.

The Master said: You, shall I teach you what knowing is? To know what you know, and to know what you do not know — that is true knowing.

One who knows others is wise; one who knows oneself is enlightened. One who conquers others has strength; one who conquers oneself is truly strong. One who knows contentment is rich; one who persists has will.

Know the other and know yourself, and in a hundred battles you will not be in peril. Know yourself but not the other, and you will win one and lose one. Know neither, and you will be in peril in every battle.

Knowledge is the directing idea of action; action is the effort of knowledge. Knowledge is the beginning of action; action is the completion of knowledge.

There has never been one who truly knows and yet does not act. If one knows but does not act, that is simply not yet knowing.

Extend the innate good knowing.

Of all things the measure is man.

For knowledge itself is power.

Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.

The true is precisely what is made.

Knowledge without action is vanity, and action without knowledge is madness.

Picture human beings as if living in an underground, cave-like dwelling.

It is of the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.

The quest for certainty…has always been a quest for a peace that is assured.

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

The clearer the knowing, the more earnest the practice; the more earnest the practice, the clearer the knowing.

To extend knowledge lies in investigating things: if one wishes to extend one's knowledge, one must approach things and exhaust their principle.

That little bit of innate knowing of yours is your own criterion.

To experience means to know facts just as they are.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

All human beings by nature desire to know.

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters.

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.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Knowing is the beginning of acting; acting is the completion of knowing.

The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.

Human knowledge and human power meet in one.

Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.

It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.

Everyone takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy… can still do.

You cannot speak of the ocean to a frog in a well — it is confined by its space.

Know the other and know yourself, and in a hundred battles you will not be in peril.

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.

We are not free to say that just anything is the subject of a moral belief.

Look at Christianity and Islam. They have the Bible and the Koran… Now, where is our own book on Orunmila? It is a question that should worry all rational Yoruba and African people.

Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.

Suppose a person were created at once, fully mature, but with sight veiled and limbs outstretched so that he touched nothing; he would affirm his own existence without affirming any body.

The knowledge of anything that has causes is not complete unless it is known through its causes.

If the apparent sense of a scriptural text conflicts with demonstration, that apparent sense admits of allegorical interpretation.

The Law has urged us to observe beings and directed us to seek knowledge of them by means of demonstration.

Knowledge is not perfected by learning alone; it is perfected when it becomes a state that moves the limbs to action.

Know yourself, for the knowledge of the self is the key to the knowledge of God.

What revelation teaches by symbols, the philosopher may reach by demonstration; the two agree in substance for those who understand.

History is a discipline that has a large number of approaches. Its useful aspects are very many. Its goal is distinguished.

The past resembles the future more than one drop of water another.

The more the intellect is perfected, the more one draws near to God; proximity is measured by knowledge.

The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all sciences is to know that there is a First Being who brought every existing thing into being.

Inquiry is not forbidden to us; on the contrary, we are commanded to know God by the path of demonstration as far as we can.

A language, most assuredly, is not conceptually neutral; syntax and vocabulary are apt to suggest definite modes of conceptualization.

A theory of truth is not of any real universal significance unless it offers some account of the notion of being so.

So for us African philosophy is a body of literature whose existence is undeniable, a bibliography which has grown constantly.

Emotion is Negro, as reason is Hellenic.

The African does not stand outside reality but enters into communion with it; knowledge is participation, not only analysis.

Cosmopolitans begin with a sense of one thing we all certainly share, which is our fallibility. Nobody has reason to be confident that they're right about everything.

The human mind, insofar as it is a simple substance distinct from the body, can neither suffer from the body nor be confused with it, but by itself, according to its own operations, understands and wills.

Ubuntu is the root of African philosophy. The be-ing of an African in the universe is inseparably anchored upon ubuntu. … Ubuntu then is the wellspring flowing with African ontology and epistemology.

There is no one word in Akan for truth.

At the point of our deepest questioning of ourselves, the religious quest awakens in us.

Perception is free from conceptual construction.

There are only two instruments of knowledge: perception and inference.

It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind; or lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination.

A mystery is a problem which encroaches upon its own data, invading them, as it were, and thereby transcending itself as a mere problem.