Francis Bacon Quotes

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.

A lecture is an occasion when you numb one end to benefit the other.

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.

A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

It is not only by the questions we have answered that progress may be measured, but also by those we are still asking. The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another, for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find.

What transforms this world is - knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.

The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.

Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.

As each generation comes into the world devoid of knowledge, its first duty is to obtain possession of the stores already amassed. It must overtake its predecessors before it can pass by them.

In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.

The boy's got a lot to learn and I've got a lot to teach.

The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.

Anything you don't understand is dangerous until you do understand it.

Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, the mere materials with which wisdom builds, till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling.

He wanted nothing, for the time being, except to understand .... Without advice, assistance or plan, he began reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject .... There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind.

You want to learn about what's already in their heads. You want to avoid putting things there.

Every step by which men add to their knowledge and skills is a step also by which they can control other men.

To begin with, our knowledge grows in spots. The spots may be large or small, but the knowledge ever grows all over... What you first gain from them is probably a small amount of new information, a few new definitions, or distinctions, or points of view. But while these special ideas are being added, the rest of your knowledge stands still, and only gradually will you 'line up' your previous opinions with the novelties I am trying to instil, and modify to some slight degree their mass.

Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.

Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe.

Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation.

One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence.

Knowledge is a thing that one cannot have enough of. It is the fruit of wisdom, to be eaten carefully and digested fully, unlike that lunch you are bolting down, little friend.