Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

It is necessary, in order to know things well, to know the particulars of them; and these, being infinite, make our knowledge eversuperficial and imperfect.

Remember that the greatest fool in the world may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.

Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.

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

You're never going to learn everything.

Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained. It is like a system of bridges built over chasms. One can travel boldly ahead over these bridges, ignoring the chasms. It is forbidden to look down into them; but that, alas, does not alter the fact that they exist.

Facts are often complicated.

You know nothing till you know all; which is the reason we never know any thing.

They understand but a little who understand only what can be explained.

The more I see, the less I know.

There are lots of things we never understand, no matter how many years we put on, no matter how much experience we accumulate.

I had discovered that learning something, no matter how complex, wasn't hard when I had a reason to want to know it.

I would like to understand things better, but I don’t want to understand them perfectly.

In proportion as man approaches the outer rim, he becomes lost in details, and the more he is preoccupied with details, the less he can understand them.

A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.

If you understand something in only one way, then you don't really understand it at all. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all other things we know. Well-connected representations let you turn ideas around in your mind, to envision things from many perspectives until you find one that works for you. And that's what we mean by thinking!

You don't know what it is to store up a lot of details and then come upon something real.

You could try and understand people, you could read books and understand words and concepts and ideas, but you could never understand enough or have enough knowledge to keep away the surprises that both fate and human beings had in store.

Intelligence complicates. Wisdom simplifies.

The greater our level of understanding, the harder the tests become.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age

All that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities.

Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth.

There's so much to learn! And just when we think, "I've got it. I really understand what's going on," we're shown a whole new stage set on which to play.