J. M. Coetzee Quotes

I know too much and not enough

Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions.

A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.

The knowledge of evil tempteth to its commission.

The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.

My father taught me that learning is an endless process, and that there is no limit to the amount of knowledge a person can contain. You are never too old to learn something new, or too young to learn too much.

I guess that's the secret. It would never have occurred to Lia to want to escape -- but then she gets kicked out. Best thing that ever happened to her? I'm not sure she would say yes, because obliviousness tends to be rather pleasant, but once you realized you've been bolivious, there's no turning back. You can't un-know what you know. You know?

When you find out who you are, you will no longer be innocent. That will be sad for others to see. All that knowledge will show on your face and change it. But sad only for others, not for yourself. You will feel you have a kind of wisdom, very mistaken, but a mistake of some power to you and so you will sadly treasure it and grow it.

Everyone knows everything about all of us. That's too much knowledge!

It is an end with priests and gods, if man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the thing forbidden in itself - it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sin, original sin. This alones is mortality: Thou shalt not know.

Ignorance is learned; innocence is forgotten.

She knew too much. -A

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

One last word of advice, though, Mr. Okada, though you may not want to hear this. There are things in this world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the very things that people most want to know about. It's strange.

When I know too much I get bored too fast.

People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.

The greatest danger in art is too much knowledge.

There's a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: Where was I before I was born. In the beginning was what? Perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it.

History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline.

I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.

There's no downside to having too much experience.

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.

Half of me knows too much to be carefree. But the other half knows enough to be grateful.

I'm not going to talk too much politics because I'm not smart enough to do that.

I'm over-educated in the things I shouldn't have known at all.