John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

I'm not very wise to many things.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not.

A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.

Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.

Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men, Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much, Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

A man hears only what he understands.

Call a man 'ignorant,' and you have license to show the world your vast fund of knowledge and wise him up.

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

If we want to enlighten people or give them new thoughts and ideas, we have to be willing to do the work of educating them.

Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned

But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know.

I do not know everything; still many things I understand.

Understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

What you know, you know, what you don't know, you don't know. This is true wisdom.

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

The man who realizes his ignorance has taken the first step toward knowledge.

You know more about me than I do about myself, that's probably true.

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.