Italo Calvino Quotes

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

The more I see, the less I know.

Knowledge is the barrier to knowing. When knowledge is dropped, knowing flowers.

Sometimes you can't know until you know.

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.

To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

There are many things that I don't understand.

This time next year,—this time ten years,—this time one hundred years,—probably it will be just as easy as we think it is to understand that glass of water, which now seems so plain and simple. I cannot doubt but that these things, which now seem to us so mysterious, will be no mysteries at all; that the scales will fall from our eyes; that we shall learn to look on things in a different way—when that which is now a difficulty will be the only commonsense and intelligible way of looking at the subject

My ignorance is widespread.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.

I could see why Archimedes got all excited. There was nothing finer than the feeling that came rushing through you when it clicked and you suddenly understood something that had puzzled you. It made you think it just might be possible to get a handle on this old world after all.

It's not finding what's lost, it's understanding what you've found.

It was all so clear now. Like everything had been lost in darkness, and then the sun came out. Some moments are like that.

You can read ten books and finally come across one detail, and it's like, "now everything else makes sense. Now I know where I am."

The moment you know you know you know.

But I still couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found out, the less I understood.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.

Suddenly a mist fell from my eyes and I knew the way I had to take.

Then I obviously didn't understand what it all meant, but I do now.

It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.