Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. Kahlil Gilbran, The Prophet
The main reason I became a teacher is that I like being the first one to introduce kids to words and music and people and numbers and concepts and idea that they have never heard about or thought about before. I like being the first one to tell them about Long John Silver and negative numbers and Beethoven and alliteration and ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning’ and similes and right angles and Ebenezer Scrooge ... Just think about what you know today. You read. You write. You work with numbers. You solve problems. We take all these things for granted. But of course you haven’t always read. You haven’t always known how to write. You weren’t born knowing how to subtract 199 from 600. Someone showed you. There was a moment when you moved from not knowing to knowing, from not understanding to understanding. That’s why I became a teacher. Phillip Done, 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny: Life Lessons from Teaching
The best books ... are those that tell you what you know already. George Orwell, 1984
We all would like to know more and, at the same time, to receive less information. In fact, the problem of a worker in today’s knowledge industry is not the scarcity of information but its excess. The same holds for professionals: just think of a physician or an executive, constantly bombarded by information that is at best irrelevant. In order to learn anything we need time Ma. And to make time we must use information filters allowing us to ignore most of the information aimed at us. We must ignore much to learn a little. Mario Augusto Bunge, Philosophy in Crisis
We the people have no excuse for starry-eyed sycophantic group-think in the Information Age. Knowledge is but a fingertip away. Tiffany Madison
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 power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility. Robin Morgan
If there’s a reality out there pertaining to any alien influence, we need to sort out the government’ misinformation and disinformation and mind-manipulation techniques that they’re using. I know for a fact that the Plan is to make all of us feel helpless. That what’s happening is beyond our realm to effect because we’ve been taken over by aliens. That our Independence Day is dawning. So beware of that. Understand that those criminals have been keeping information and technology from us under the blanket of national security. They are twenty-five years at least. So when they say, ‘It’s aliens! It’s aliens!’ and they show us some incredibly technology, don’t fall into the trap of feeling totally helpless. That this is beyond our realm to effect. Superstition begins where knowledge leaves off, and they have been keeping knowledge from us for a long time. Cathy O’Brien lecture
Huge machines cutting through solid rock. The transportation of multi-ton stone blocks. Modern aircraft carrying millions of people each day around the world. And space shuttles sending humans to the stars. Examples of modern technology, or evidence that these incredible achievements actually existed on Earth thousands of years ago? Did ancient man possess knowledge far beyond that of our own century? And if so, from where did it come? Ancient Aliens s1e1: The Evidence, History 2010
The scans also reveal how Leonardo intensifies colour by saturation: they show how Leonardo does not simply add black or a darker colour into his painting to represent light and shade, but blends layer after layer of colour to create the shadows. This method is so skilful no-one has successfully emulated it. It is in his painting that Leonardo’s true genius is revealed. And whilst he may not have been the groundbreaking inventor history has portrayed him as, the range of subjects found in his notebooks reveal the astounding breadth of his knowledge. Mystery Files: Da Vinci, National Geographic 2010
He set himself an almost impossible task: to discover everything there was to know. Alan Yentob, Leonardo: The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything, BBC 2011
These were individuals who sought knowledge ... People who sought a higher level of knowledge – the secrets, the mysteries of the universe. Kenneth Hanson, author Secrets from the Lost Bible
Somerset: I’ll never understand it. All these books. A world of knowledge at their fingertips, and what do you do, you play poker all night.
Guide: We got culture coming out our ears. Se7en 1995 starring Brad Pitt & Morgan Freeman & Kevin Spacey & Gwyneth Paltrow & Richard Roundtree & Richard Schiff & R Lee Ermey & Mark Boone junior & John Cassini & Reg E Cathey et al, director David Fincher, playing poker
Jack Nicholson: You’re better off not knowing.
Mrs Mulwray: I want to know. Chinatown 1974 starring Faye Dunaway & Jack Nicholson & John Huston & Perry Lopez & Roman Polanski & John Hillerman & Darrell Zwerling & Diane Ladd & Roy Jenson & Richard Bakalyan et al, director Roman Polanski
Not even a Vulcan can know the unknown, Captain. Star Trek s2e20: Return to Tomorrow
Did they know? Could they really have not known? Or did they just not want to know? Hitler’s Generals: Keitel: The Lackey, 1996
It’s a very American spirit of an idea – this idea that everybody should have access to knowledge. Jimmy Wales, co-founder Wikipedia
Knowledge to him was something sacred and solitary ... He made the world’s first reflecting telescope. Tristram Hunt, Great Britons: Isaac Newton, BBC 2002
This New Age philosophy of the spiritual re-awakening of man ... Man’s purpose in this New Age is to acquire more and more knowledge. Walter Russell, essay Power Through Knowledge, 1944
Knowledge is not just the preserve of the educated elite. Just because someone has not had a formal education, that does not mean he does not have wisdom and common sense. Vikas Swarup
Knowledge speaks, but Wisdom listens. Jimi Hendrix
I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while – just once in a while – there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word wisdom mentioned! J D Salinger, Franny and Zooey
The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
But these are foolish things to all the wise,
And I love wisdom more than she loves me;
My tendency is to philosophise
On most things, from a tyrant to a tree;
But still the spouseless virgin Knowledge flies,
What are we? and whence come we? what shall be
Our ultimate existence? What’s our present?
Are questions answerless, and yet incessant. Lord Byron, Don Juan
Sorrow is knowledge: they who do not know the most
Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life. ibid.
The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief. Sigmund Freud
The immature think that knowledge and action are different, but the wise see them as the same. Bhagavad Gita: El Canto del Senor
Knowledge, the object of knowledge and the knower are the three factors which motivate action; the senses, the work and the doer comprise the threefold basis of action. ibid.
I would rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent than in the extent of my powers and dominion. Alexander the Great