Michael Leunig Quotes

To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.

The more I read, the more I realise what I don't know.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. To me, it always seemed that the solution had to be wisdom. You did not refuse to look at danger, rather you learned how to handle it safely.

Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers.

Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

A wise system of education will at last teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

We will acquire knowledge and science wherever they are to be found and we will stuff them into the head of every individual in the country. No limits, no conditions can be attached to knowledge and science.

Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.

An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious—just dead wrong.

A fool, Mr, Edgeworth, is one who has never made an experiment.

To me the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet. That I haven’t understood enough. That I can’t know enough. That I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom… Those who tell you that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority: don’t think of that as a gift. Think of it as a poison chalice. Push it aside, however tempting it is. Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.

I had great mentors in my parents who always sought to understand the world around them. And they would push me to really think things through.

Beware of current truths.

The more you learn, the more you learn you don't know.

Sometimes I learn by someone giving me warnings and giving me advice about what to do next. And other times, a lot of times, I have to put my hand into the fire.

Curiosity is life. Assumption is death.

Knowledge is not a guarantee of good political behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.

Garrett," said Stendahl, "do you know why I've done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe's books without really reading them. You took other people's advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you'd have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett.

The more man learned, the more he realized he did not know.