Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

Erudition without pedantry is as a rare as wisdom itself.

What's an expert? I read somewhere, that the more a man knows, the more he knows he doesn't know. So I suppose one definition of an expert would be someone who doesn't admit out loud that he knows enough about a subject to know he doesn't really know how much.

I think there is a basic comfort in clever people who know things.

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

There is a tendency of people to try to make you believe only a few people are smart. As a brain surgeon, I know better than that.

No one, however smart, however well educated … is the suppository of all wisdom.

I think I'm pretty smart. I think I'm pretty clever. But there's a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

A pedant holds more to instruct us with what he knows, than of what we are ignorant.

Shall I tell you what knowledge is? It is to know both what one knows and what one does not know.

I can't ask for more out of life, and the more I learn, the less I know.

Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.

No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know and the more you know that you don't know.

Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.

They only are wise who know that they know nothing.

If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.

Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom.

The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn-the less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything.

The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.

Fear and realisation of ignorance, strong medicines against stupid pride.

He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows.

No man is the wiser for his learning

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

And any man who knows a thing, knows he knows not a damn, damn thing at all.