Anton Chekhov 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.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself.

Doubt is not below knowledge, but above it.

For me now, what I've come to is, we don't know anything.

The more I see, the less I know.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance.

My path to wisdom began when I stopped pretending to know things I didn't know. When I explicitly admitted to the limits of my knowledge, stopped building on ambiguity and ignorance, and instead realized that I knew nothing, not even the things I thought I knew.

There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.

Only in the 20th century, artists started taking the study of perception in a more humane way. They were thinking about the eye as being an instrument, the whole body as being a visual instrument. That sort of gave way a little bit with Cartesian­ - the "Cogito ergo sum" argument. It's not, "I think therefore I exist." It's, "I feel therefore I think therefore I exist."

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?’

The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.

What you know, you know, what you don't know, you don't know. This is true wisdom.

Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don’t know, know that you don’t know — the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.

Seeing is believing and believing is knowing and knowing beats unknowing and the unknown.

I think all this talk about age is foolish. Every time I'm one year older, everyone else is too.

I just want to make a beautiful film. I've had it in my head for so long, so I want to try. Every now and again I get scared. And that's not really how I operate in songwriting or as Sia the artist, the singer. I don't operate from a place of fear. But this is such a new area for me. I still have some insecurity. So, like, once a week I get washed from the top of my skull down to my toes with this vomitous feeling of fear. I think, "Just don't do it. You don't have to do it. You're already a singer and a songwriter. Really, you don't have to make a movie.".

For after all man knows mighty little, and may some day learn enough of his own ignorance to fall down again and pray. Not that Icare. Only, if such is God's will, and Fate and Evolution--let there be God!

Only fools think they're wise; the rest of us just muddle through as we can.

I know what I'm thinking bout, I think. Nothing. And as much of it as I can.

It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3)

Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention. Just as people lost in the wilderness, on a cliff face or in a blizzard pay attention with a kind of acuity that they would not have if they thought they knew where they were. Why? Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying real attention. If you think you know where you are, you stop looking.

...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.