Knowledge Display Quotes

An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows; a journalist or consultant the opposite.

Certain books seem to be written, not that we might learn from them, but in order that we might see how much the author knows.

I think it's good to know more than the average guy. If I'm in a bar now and some pretty girl is talking to some handsome 24-year-old man, I'll say, "Okay, who's the emperor after Caligula? What chief mistake did Marcus Aurelius make in choosing a successor?" He'll just look like an idiot. She'll just gravitate toward me, I'm thinking. It works in Detroit.

Whoever interrupts the conversation of others to make a display of his fund of knowledge, makes notorious his own stock of ignorance.

In fact, anybody else who hears this [speech of Donald Trump in Philadelphia] is probably gonna be dutifully impressed with Trump's comportment, his presentation, his knowledge of this, and his temperament here. It's all a great package and looks good.

It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language

Pedantry is paraded knowledge.

I was the type of person who was the question-asker. And not just genuine questions, I would ask a question so the author would know how much I knew about them. Once I went to a Tobias Wolff reading. I knew he was teaching at Syracuse at that time. And so, I remember asking him how he liked Syracuse. People do that to me now and it's okay. There is rarely a time when I just have had enough.

I know if you talk faster and use more ten-dollar words than everyone around you, you convince half of them that they should shut up because you know what you're talking about.

Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

In England only uneducated people show off their knowledge; nobody quotes Latin or Greek authors in the course of conversation, unless he has never read them.

Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.

Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as working-days, to be showing the relics of learning, as monks do the relics of their saints - without working one - one single miracle with them?

I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations