Knowledge Quotes

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge - a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.

Every extension of knowledge arises from making the conscious the unconscious.

Once and for all, there are many things I choose not to know.-Wisdom sets limits even to knowledge.

No honey is sweeter than that of knowledge.

Every acquisition, every step forward in knowledge is the result of courage, of severity toward oneself, of cleanliness with respect to oneself.

Anti-theses.- The most senile thing ever thought about man is contained in the celebrated saying 'the ego is always hateful'; the most childish is the even more celebrated 'love thy neighbor as thyself'. - In the former, knowledge of human nature has ceased, in the latter it has not yet even begun.

Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are, and so makes its theory more popular and convincing.

Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.

Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.

A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.

All is alike, nothing is worth while, knowledge strangleth.

There is a stupid humility that is quite common and when a person is afflicted with it, he is once and for all disqualified for being a disciple of knowledge.

The strongest knowledge (that of the total freedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: for it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity.

It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge-and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves-how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

For the purpose of knowledge we must know how to make use of the inward current which draws us towards a thing, and also of the current which after a time draws us away from it.

Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life: with its own torment it increases its own knowledge. Did you already know that?