John D. Barrow Quotes

Secrets are the blood of life. Every big thing is a secret, even when you know it, because you never know all of it. If you can know everything about anything, it is not worth knowing.

All that we know is nothing, we are merely crammed wastepaper baskets, unless we are in touch with that which laughs at all our knowing.

For only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If "truth" were what I can understand, it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized. Truth must reside precisely in what I shall never understand.

The veil is slowly rising, but as regards innumerable questions we must be content to remain in ignorance.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

All writing is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to find out. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.

Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

Our ignorance will always remain greater than our knowledge.

I'll never know everything. My life would be a lot worse if there was nothing I knew the answers about - and if there was nothing I didn't know the answers about.

I say this all the time: All I know is I know nothing at all.

Whoever believes he knows why everything is as it is has hold of nothing.

Well isn’t that one thing you’re all the more wise for? Age has taught you something. It seems to me that you know the big secret. That nobody knows what’s going on

One last word of advice, though, Mr. Okada, though you may not want to hear this. There are things in this world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the very things that people most want to know about. It's strange.

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

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery.

We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know.

We know nothing in reality; for truth lies in an abyss.

The greatest part cannot know, and therefore they must believe.

The highest knowledge is to know that we are surrounded by mystery.

Sometimes there are no answers.

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.

Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops

Those who know it do not speak about it. Those who speak about it do not know it.