George Eliot Quotes

A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading.

I love information. I want to stay current. I don't want to be under-informed. But I'm busy. Sometimes, I need an instant overview of a situation that I can grasp in a second.

Don't you find that the more you know, the more you don't know and can't ever learn because there's too much stuff out there?

In your thirst for knowledge, be sure not to drown in all the information.

I love academics, theory and all that. I love and admire that and try to do as much reading as I can.

I get a fizzy thing in my brain, like a nice glass of wine, and I want to know facts and I want to understand.

Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?

We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.

True learning takes energy, passion and a burning desire.

The more I study, the more insatiable do I feel my genius for it to be.

The more you read, the more you realize there are fascinating books to be read and so little time to do so.

The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.

I feel a complete thirst for knowledge and an eager unrest to go further in it as well as satisfaction at every acquisition. There was a time when I believed that this alone could constitute the honor of mankind, and I had contempt for the ignorant rabble who know nothing.

This is an awesome time to be a knowledge seeker, no better time, but it's also the best time in history to be a complete idiot.

The big problem in America is that everyone is spending 2-3 hours a day watching TV. If you spend that same amount of time reading, you'll be in the top 1% of whatever your field is.

The worst, the most difficult thing I think is that the more you become intrigued by science and the information is out there, the more you are aware of the paucity of your own knowledge.

The thing that keeps me most awake is the desire and curiosity to learn more.

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.

Life is too short to learn everything by personal experience.

If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.

It has often been said there’s so much to be read, you never can cram all those words in your head.

I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew not what to do, and so he read.

Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of. I knew I knew very little, but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn't be taught to me at George Washington High School.

Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.