Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Knowledge Quotations

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is exclusively my own.

The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.

At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.

When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.

The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.

With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

What a man does not understand, he does not possess.

Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal.

What is not fully understood is not possessed.

The greater the knowledge, the greater the doubt.

What we do not understand we do not possess.

Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.

It is not enough to have knowledge; one must apply it. It is not enough to have wishes; one must also accomplish it.