Marcus Aurelius Quotes

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.

Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?

If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance.

The surest way to lose truth is to pretend that one already wholly possesses it.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

And I like asking questions, to keep learning; people with big egos might not want to look unsure.

The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.

The learned man knows that he is ignorant.

It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man.

[It is] ... a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.

Many person might have achieved wisdom had they not supposed that they already possessed it.

If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance.

Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.

Who does not understand should either learn, or be silent.

Teach thy tongue to say 'I do not know', and thou shalt progress.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

'What am I missing?' is a much more important question than 'How cool am I?'

I'm not quite pompous enough to think of myself as an educator or a man capable of definitive refutation of falsehoods.

If you are not egotistical, you will welcome the opportunity to learn more.