William Hazlitt Quotes

There are a great many people who do not understand things so there is no use in telling them.

You may be ignorant of all the books in the world, and I hope you are, of all the latest theories, but that is not ignorance.

I hate books; they only teach people to talk about what they don't understand.

Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative.

People need stories...we use stories to teach, to learn, to make sense of the world around us. As long as we need stories, we will need books.

Only in books do we learn what’s really going on.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

I like to watch mankind in its futile attempt to understand the unknown, when they don't even understand that which they know.

There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.

All of science to me, everything that we have learned, is important to the extent that it brings us to our senses.

Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom.

An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.

The more we know, the more we realize there is to know.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

Knowledge is ancient error reflecting on its youth.

The animal is ignorant of the fact that he knows. The man is aware of the fact that he is ignorant.

The more I learn about things, I realise how wrong I was before.

It really is very true that the more you do, the less you know. I try to keep myself very open-minded in that sense.

Properly speaking, we learn from those books only that we cannot judge. The author of a book that I am competent to criticise would have to learn from me.

With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them.

People who are wary of what they might find in a book if they opened one are right to be.

Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books.