Lewis Thomas Quotes

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

All that we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown.

Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

Our ignorance will always remain greater than our knowledge.

Fortunately, nature is as generous with its problems as Nobel with his fortune. The more we know, the more aware we are of what we know not.

If you ask me anything I don't know, I'm not going to answer.

Indeed, the most important product of knowledge is ignorance.

The remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don't actually know what we actually know.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

The known is finite, the unknown is infinite.

Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

The clear and perfect truth no man has seen, nor will there be anyone who knows about the gods and what I say about all things...; for, however perfect what he says may be, yet he does not know it; all things are matters of opinion.

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.

The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down".

Of course, I don't know everything. Considering the infinite amount of knowledge that one could acquire in a virtually innumerable array of intellectual disciplines, it's probably more accurate to say that I don't know anything.

The world is not a solid continent of facts sprinkled by a few lakes of uncertainties, but a vast ocean of uncertainties speckled by a few islands of calibrated and stabilized forms

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.

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

In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

Every branch of human knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery.

He that knew all that learning ever writ, Knew only this - that he knew nothing yet.