The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Classical antiquity7 quotes
I know that I do not know. — Socrates · 399 BCBehold! human beings living in an underground den... Like ourselves... They see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave. — Socrates · 375 BCTo fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. — Socrates · 399 BCLife is one long struggle in the dark. — Lucretius · 55 BCTo be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. — Cicero · 46 BCThe happiest life consists in ignorance. — Sophocles · 442 BCAll 7 quotes →Age of Enlightenment3 quotes
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again. — Alexander Pope · 1711Men blaspheme what they do not know. — Blaise Pascal · 1662There’s none so blind as they that won’t see. — Jonathan Swift · 1738The Renaissance3 quotes
The first and wisest of them all professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew. — John Milton · 1671There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little. — Francis Bacon · 1625To learning & law, there's no greater foe than they that nothing know. — Robert Greene · 1592Ancient World2 quotes
He who knows does not speak.
He who speaks does not know. — Lao Tzu · 400 BCAll men have in themselves that which is truly honorable. Only they do not think of it. — Mencius · 300 BCEarly Christianity1 quote
It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance. — St. Jerome · 394