Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

Whoever believes he knows why everything is as it is has hold of nothing.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

No one, however smart, however well educated … is the suppository of all wisdom.

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool.

I'll never know everything. My life would be a lot worse if there was nothing I knew the answers about - and if there was nothing I didn't know the answers about.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know.

For only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If "truth" were what I can understand, it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized. Truth must reside precisely in what I shall never understand.

Understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest.

A foolish man thinks he knows everything. A wise man knows he doesn't.

Sometimes we just have to accept there are things we can’t know. Why is your sister ill? Why did my father die?…Sometimes we think we should be able to know everything. But we can’t. we have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

I have thousands of opinions still - but that is down from millions - and, as always, I know nothing.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

Indeed, the most important product of knowledge is ignorance.

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

I'm not very wise to many things.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.

I've reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don't know anything. People who claim that they know something are responsible for most of the fuss in the world.

Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain!

Beware of anyone who says they know. Trust me, they don't, or they wouldn't have to say they did.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.