Knowledge Prioritization Quotes

We are anxious when there is a dissonance between our "knowledge" and the perceivable facts. Since our "knowledge" is not to be doubted or questioned, it is the facts that have to be altered.

Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it.

What is important is not the quantity of your knowledge but its quality. You can know many things without knowing the most important.

A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

All professional men are handicapped by not being allowed to ignore things which are useless.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

I don't really like filling my brain with a lot of stuff.

It would be no reproach to a philosopher, that he knew the future better than the past, or even than the present. It is better worth knowing.

Some information is important, and some is not, and intelligence consists in knowing one from the other.

The art of writing history is the art of emphasizing the significant facts at the expense of the insignificant. And it is the same in every field of knowledge. Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother about.

The children are taught more of the meanest state in Europe than of the country they are born and bred in, despite the singularity of its characteristics, the interest of its history, the rapidity of its advance, and the stupendous promise of its future.

People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

It is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read.

It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good, but the well-reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best. And it is not possible to read over many on the same subject without a great deal of loss of precious time.

No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read.

We are ignorant of things necessary, because we learn things superfluous and unnecessary

I am sure that one secret of a successful teacher is that he has formulated quite clearly in his mind what the pupil has got to know in precise fashion. He will then cease from half-hearted attempts to worry his pupils with memorizing a lot of irrelevant stuff of inferior importance.

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.