Bryce Courtenay Quotes

Sometimes when I'm in a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one.

I loved to learn everything, everything in sight, and I was never satisfied that I knew everything there was to know in each of my courses.

I'm a sponge for information.

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ASK. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds.

I have a thirst - it's an awful word, but I'm thirsty for knowledge. I like knowing things, the odder the better, the more obtuse the better.

Education is not something where you just tip your head and they pour it in your ear. You’ve got to want it.

I get a fizzy thing in my brain, like a nice glass of wine, and I want to know facts and I want to understand.

'But the man who is ready to taste every form of knowledge, is glad to learn and never satisfied - he's the man who deserves to be called a philosopher, isn't he?'

I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific.

Our books approach very slowly the things we most wish to know.

People who cling to their illusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: a people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water.

He who always seeks more light the more he finds, and finds more the more he seeks, is one of the few happy mortals who take and give in every point of time. The tide and ebb of giving and receiving is the sum of human happiness, which he alone enjoys who always wishes to acquire new knowledge, and always finds it.

I don’t really know what “intellectual” means, but if it means you’ve got a desire to learn, you’ve got a desire to look for things that haven’t been presented to you, then, maybe. I think that “intellectual” is quite an exclusive word. I think it’s just for anyone that has a thirst or a hunger to improve themselves, or a yearning to escape from somewhere to get to a better place.

We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.

An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the in the centre of the Library here and think despairingly how impossible it is ever to become possessed of all the wealth of facts and ideas contained in the books surrounding me on every hand.

Curiosity in children, is but an appetite for knowledge. The great reason why children abandon themselves wholly to silly pursuits and trifle away their time insipidly is, because they find their curiosity balked, and their inquiries neglected.

Man is an ignoramus athirst for knowledge.

The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive. It begins earlier and lasts longer

It is the pain of ignorance which makes one into a seeker.

Even when I was older, I couldn't stop asking questions.

True learning takes energy, passion and a burning desire.

The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book.

There is nothing new to gain. On the other hand a man must lose his ignorance. That is all.

[Instead of collecting stamps, he collected dictionaries and encyclopaedias:] Because you can learn more from them.