Samuel Johnson Quotes

Knowledge is that which benefits, not that which is memorized

It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he can make of what he knows.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful but that which helps to enlarge our possessions or to raise our station in society, then Mythology has no claim to the appellation.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.

Learning is an active process. We learn by doing.. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.

It is not difficult to know a thing; what is difficult is to know how to use what you know

Knowledge is vain and fruitless which is not reduced to practice.

He who learns, and makes no use of his learning, is a beast of burden with a load of books. Does the ass comprehend whether he carries on his back a library or a bundle of faggots?

Words without experience are meaningless.

The gains in education are never really lost. Books may be burned and cities sacked, but truth, like the yearning for freedom, lives in the hearts of humble men.

Books are good but they are only maps. Reading a book by direction of a man I read that so many inches of rain fell during the year. Then he told me to take the book and squeeze it between my hands. I did so and not a drop of water came from it. It was the idea only that the book conveyed. So we can get good from books, from the temple, from the church, from anything, so long as it leads us onward and upward.

Truth travels slowly, but it will reach even you in time.

It is better to understand a part of truth and apply it to our lives than to understand nothing at all and flounder helplessly in a vain attempt to pierce the mystery of existence.

Knowledge for its own sake was meaningless, its mere accumulation a waste of time. Knowledge must lead to understanding.

The further one advances in experience, the closer one comes to the unfathomable; the more one learns to utilize experience, the more one recognizes that the unfathomable is of no practical value.

Some things that are true are not very useful.

A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.

I seek the truth...it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm.

Not to know is the beginning of wisdom.

Education is cheap; experience is expensive.

The supreme guide in life is knowledge.