Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

Do not imagine that what we have said of the insufficiency of our understanding and of its limited extent is an assertion founded only on the Bible: for philosophers likewise assert the same, and perfectly understand it,- without having regard to any religion or opinion.

It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind.

There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.

The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge.

Don’t see the mind for more than it is, but don’t misread it for all that it can be.

you and I have good enough minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.

The limits of thought are not so much set from outside, by the fullness or poverty of experiences that meet the mind, as from within, by the power of conception, the wealth of formulative notions with which the mind meets experiences.

He who gives you the diameter of your knowledge,presc ribes the circumference of your activities.

Know that for the human mind there are certain objects of perception which are within the scope of its nature and capacity; on the other hand, there are, amongst things which actually exist, certain objects which the mind can in no way and by no means grasp: the gates of perception are closed against it.

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.

Even great spirits have only their five-fingers' breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins.

Socrates' way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge.

The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one s own knowledge is not to overstep them.

This is...self-knowled ge-for a man to know what he knows, and what he does not know.

A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.

A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific.

In order to draw a limit to thinking, we should have to think both sides of this limit.

We can only learn so much about our minds, because we are using our minds to do so.

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.

I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.

Any model we make does not describe the universe it describes what our brains are capable of saying at this time.

Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to un-know.

Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding, can expect only to improve a single science. In every other part of learning, they must be content to follow opinions, which they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they claim as peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times, the collective labour of a thousand intellects.

If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.