Knowledge

A wisedome-lover, willing to be wise:
Yet all that I have learn'd (huge toyles now past)
By long experience, and in famous schooles,
Is but to know my ignorance at last;
"Who think themselves most wise, are greatest fooles."
~ Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, The Tragedie of Croesus (1604).

A proverb says that what to more than two is known
Has ceased to be a mystery, and public grown.
~ William Rounseville (W.R.) Alger, from The Poetry of the East (1856). The Safe Secret

There is nothing a man knows, in grief or in sin,
Half so bitter as to think, What I might have been!
~ William Rounseville (W.R.) Alger, from The Poetry of the Orient (1865). Poems Other Than Oriental. A Mood

[H]owever high we climb in the pursuit of knowledge, we shall still see heights above us, and the more we extend our view, the more conscious we shall be of the immensity which lies beyond.
~ William George Armstrong, Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1863).

I know no one thing which I perfectly know.
~ William Arthur, The Tongue of Fire: Or, The True Power of Christianity (1856). Chapter V. Permanent Benefits Resulting to the Church

In a general way, we try to anticipate some of your questions so that I can respond 'no comment' with some degree of knowledge.
~ William Baker, in The New York Times (19 April 1988). Washington Talk: Briefing; Looking Ahead at C.I.A.

Modern science was made possible by the social organization of knowledge.
~ William E. Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958). Chapter 1. The Advent of Existentialism

As the desire of knowledge is the most natural to the human soul, so the obtaining of it produces the most noble and sweetest pleasure.
~ William Bates, Harmony of the Divine Attributes (1697).

The more our knowledge is extended, the more incompatible does the theory of evolution become with the facts.
~ William Bateson, Address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1921)

Enthusiastic Admiration is the first Principle of Knowledge, and its last.
~ William Blake, in The Life of William Blake, Volume I (1863). Notes on Reynolds' Discourses (written c. 1798-1808; aka Annotations to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds).

General knowledges are those knowledges that idiots possess.
~ William Blake, in The Life of William Blake, Volume I (1863). Notes on Reynolds' Discourses (written c. 1798-1808; aka Annotations to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds).

General knowledge is remote knowledge: it is in particulars that wisdom consists, and happiness too.
~ William Blake, from A Vision of the Last Judgment (c. 1810).

He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
~ William Blake, from The Pickering Manuscript (c. 1803). Auguries of Innocence

I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). A Memorable Fancy

[T]he true method of knowledge is experiment.
~ William Blake, All Religions are One (1788). The Argument

Yes, I have; I have a great ambition to know everything, sir.
~ William Blake, from Poetical Sketches (1783). King Edward the Third

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). Proverbs of Hell

You ought not to ask me a question when you don't know the answer to it.
~ William Jennings Bryan, testimony in Tennessee v. Scopes (20 July 1925).

No coach has ever won a game by what he knows; it's what his players know that counts.
~ Paul William "Bear" Bryant, I Ain't Never Been Nothing but a Winner: Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant's 323 Greatest Quotes About Success, On and Off the Football Field (March 2000).

Knowledge is the material with which Genius builds her fabrics. The greater its abundance, the more power is required to dispose it into order and beauty, but the more vast and magnificent will be the structure.
~ William Cullen Bryant, Lectures on Poetry before the New York Athenaeum (April 1825; published in 1884). Lecture III. On Poetry in its Relation to our Age and Country

I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth.
~ Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods (1998).

All knowledge all discoveries belong to everybody. ... All knowledge all discoveries belong to you by right. It is time to demand what belongs to you.
~ William S. Burroughs, in The Job: Interviews With William S. Burroughs (1969). Prisoners of the Earth Come Out

You can't show anyone anything he hasn't seen already, on some level -- anymore than you can tell anyone anything he doesn't already know.
~ William S. Burroughs, first published in Kindskopf (1991). Helnwein's work (essay written in 1990)

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (1959).

It is a knowledge easily taught, and quickly learned, where there is a good master, and an apt scholar.
~ William Byrd, from Psalmes, Sonets and Songs of Sadnes and Pietie, Made Into Musicke Of Fiue Parts (1588).

And few there are in this world, high or low,
Who do not like to know what others know.
~ William McKendree ("Will") Carleton, from Farm Festivals (1881). The Festival Of Industry; Or, The County Fair, V. (The Laboring Men)

There's lots of people -- this town wouldn't hold them --
Who don't know much excepting what is told them.
~ William McKendree ("Will") Carleton, from City Ballads (1885). Travel

Three things are given man to know:
Beauty and truth and honor.
~ (William) Bliss Carman, in The Century Magazine (1903). A Neighbor's Creed

It has often been observed, that they, who have the most time at their disposal, profit by it the least. A single hour in the day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulations of knowledge.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), Address Introductory to the Franklin Lectures, Boston MA (September 1838). On Self-Culture

It is not the quantity, but the quality of knowledge, which determines the mind's dignity.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), Lectures On The Elevation Of The Labouring Portion Of The Community (1840). Lecture I (delivered in Boston MA; 9 January 1840)

Knowledge fails of its best end when it does not minister to a high virtue.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), Lectures On The Elevation Of The Labouring Portion Of The Community (1840). Lecture I (delivered in Boston MA; 9 January 1840)

Knowledge is essential to freedom.
~ William Ellery Channing, in Dr. Channing's Note-book (1887). Wisdom -- Knowledge

I only maintain ... that what is mysterious, secret, unknown, cannot at the same time be known as an object of faith.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), from The Works of William E. Channing, D.D. (1841). On Self-Denial

Human beings do not understand anything completely, not even the least thing or the most familiar, because they do not perfectly understand the whole to which each thing belongs.
~ William Newton Clarke, The Christian Doctrine of God (1909). III. God and the Universe

We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know.
~ William Kingdon (W.K.) Clifford, in Contemporary Review (1877). The Ethics of Belief, III. The Limits Of Inference

In these days, everybody knows everything -- and thinks nothing worth knowing, after all.
~ (William) Wilkie Collins, I Say No; Or, The Love-letter Answered (1884). Chapter IV: Miss Ladd's Drawing Master

We can neither know nor judge -- ourselves?others may judge, but cannot know us -- God alone judges and knows too.
~ (William) Wilkie Collins, Basil (1852). Part I. II

Thou god of our idolatry, the press ...
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise;
Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies;
Like Eden's dread probationary tree,
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). The Progress of Error

There seems no limit to research, for as been truly said, the more the sphere of knowledge grows, the larger becomes the surface of contact with the unknown.
~ William Cecil Dampier (aka William Cecil Dampier-Whetham), A History of Science, and Its Relations with Philosophy and Religion (1929).

But ask not bodies (doomed to die),
To what abode they go;
Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy,
It is not safe to know.
~ Sir William Davenant, The Just Italian (1630). Act V, scene i

Can future Knowledge quite destroy the past?
~ Sir William Davenant, Song. Endimion Porter, and Olivia

Knowledge is theory. We should be thankful if action of management is based on theory. Knowledge has temporal spread. Information is not knowledge. The world is drowning in information but is slow in acquisition of knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge.
~ W. Edwards Deming, in Fourth Generation Management: The New Business Consciousness (1994). Foreward

We do not know what quality is.
~ W. Edwards Deming

You should not ask questions without knowledge.
~ W. Edwards Deming

Today we have climbed to heights where we would open at least the outer courts of knowledge to all, display its treasures to many, and select the few to whom its mystery of Truth is revealed.
~ William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Of the Training of Black Men

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Philosophy: the Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers (1926).

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume VI (1957). The Reformation

Do you remember the Platonic dialog in which Socrates argues the definition of wisdom with Hippocrates? As far as I'm concerned, Hippocrates was the first hippy, a guy who was smug because he thought he knew something. Socrates was wise because he realized how little he knew.
~ Bill Evans, Down Beat Magazine (1960).

I don't know anything about inspiration because I don't know what inspiration is; I've heard about it, but I never saw it.
~ William Faulkner, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 12 (Spring 1956). The Art of Fiction No. 12

Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what that other man or woman is doing.
~ William Faulkner, Light in August (1932).

You cannot know yet whether what you see is what you are looking at or what you are believing.
~ William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text (1990).

Too many of us wait to do the perfect thing, with the result we do nothing. The way to get ahead is to start now. While many of us are waiting until conditions are "just right" before we go ahead, others are stumbling along, fortunately ignorant of the dangers that beset them. By the time we are, in our superior wisdom, decided to make a start, we discover that those who have gone fearlessly on before, have, in their blundering way, traveled a considerable distance. If you start now, you will know a lot next year that you don't know now, and that you will not know next year, if you wait.
~ William Feather, in The William Feather Magazine

Dogmatism is to maintain that knowledge may be attained by the right use of our faculties, each within its proper sphere, and employed in a right method. This is the natural creed of the human race.
~ William Fleming, The Vocabulary of Philosophy, Mental, Moral, and Metaphysical (1856).

It is the great glory of the quest for human knowledge that, while making some small contribution to that quest, we can also continue to learn and to take pleasure in learning. Fellow students, there will be hard work and heart break in your futures but there will also be stimulating intellectual pleasure and joy. In less pompous language I call it fun.
~ William A. Fowler, Speech at the Nobel Banquet, Stockholm, Sweden (10 December 1983).

"I don't know" has become "I don't know yet."
~ Bill Gates

You need to know about customer feedback that says things should be better.
~ Bill Gates

It used to be easy to know what we wanted for our children, and now the best for our children might mean deciding which ones to kill. We've always wanted the best for our grandparents, and now that might mean killing them. We have the awesome knowledge to do these things, and inevitably we shall be forced to act on it.
~ Willard "Will" Gaylin, Address, Conference of the American Association of University Women (17 February 1972).

Not only in books but in things themselves look for knowledge.
~ William Gilbert, De Magnete (1600). Preface

You can acquire a lot of knowledge without ever going to school.
~ William Glasser, M.D., interview in Teacher Education Quarterly (Summer 2002). An interview with William Glasser

All branches of knowledge are to be considered as fair subjects of enquiry: and he that has never doubted, may be said, in the highest and strictest sense of the word, never to have believed.
~ William Godwin, Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries (1831). Essay XXI: Of Astronomy

Nobody knows anything.
~ William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting (1983).

Liberty is one of the best of all sublunary advantages. I would willingly therefore communicate knowledge, without infringing, or with as little possible violence to, the volition and individual judgment of the person to be instructed.
~ William Godwin, The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners and Literature in a Series of Essays (1797). Part I. Essay IX: Of the Communication of Knowledge

They call men learned and clever, who have a smattering of knowledge, and nothing deep.
~ William Gordon, M.D. F.L.S., in The Christian Philosopher Triumphing Over Death (1850).

The more man learns, the less he knows.
~ Billy Graham, from Billy Graham in Quotes (2011).

Nothing is more powerful and liberating than knowledge, and nothing is more important than educating our young people. Knowledge is the basic requirement; it is absolutely essential for individuals to have it in order to gain the full advantage of their rights to both freedom and opportunity.
~ William Herbert Gray III, (June 1991)

When one undertakes to show the way, he should know something of the path.
~ William Withey Gull, in A Collection of the Published Writings of William Withey Gull, Volume 2 (1896). Memoir: IV. Notes and Aphorisms

Can Christ be in thy heart, and thou not know it? Can one king be dethroned and another crowned in thy soul, and thou hear no scuffle?
~ William Gurnall

I do not hesitate to maintain, that what we are conscious of is constructed out of what we are not conscious of, -- that our whole knowledge, in fact, is made up of the unknown and the incognizable.
~ Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, in Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1858-60). Volume I. Metaphysics. Lecture XVIII. Consciousness, -- General Phenomena

[K]nowledge is for the sake of man, and not man for the sake of knowledge.
~ Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, in Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1858-60). Volume I. Metaphysics. Lecture I. Philosophy -- Its Absolute Utility, (A). Subjective

[T]he pursuit of knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life is itself only a traveling from grave to grave.
~ Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, from Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform (1852).

[A]ll we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown.
~ William Harvey, Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; 1628). Dedication

[T]here is no perfect knowledge which can be entitled ours, that is innate; none but what has been obtained from experience, or derived in some way from our senses.
~ William Harvey, Anatomical Exercises on the Generation of Animals (1651).

It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
~ William Hazlitt, Table-talk; Or, Original Essays, Volume II (1825 edition). On The Conduct Of Life; or, Advice to a School-Boy (1822 essay)

Knowledge is pleasure as well as power.
~ William Hazlitt, Table-Talk; or, Original Essays (1821-1822). Essay I. On The Pleasure Of Painting

The more information individuals possess, or the more they have refined upon any subject, the more readily can they conceive and admit the same kind of superiority to themselves that they feel over others.
~ William Hazlitt, Table-Talk, or Original Essays on Men and Manners, 2nd series (1824). On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority

[T]he way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
~ William Hazlitt, in Sketches and Essays (1839). On Knowledge of the World (written in 1827)

What is research, but a blind date with knowledge?
~ Will Henry (Henry Wilson Allen)

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.
~ Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues (1956 autobiography).

You can always draw as well as you know how to. I flatter myself that I feel more than I express on canvas; but I know that is not so.
~ William Morris (W.M.) Hunt

What food is to the body, that knowledge is to the mind. It is the bread of intellectual life.
~ William Dewitt Hyde, Practical Ethics (1892). Chapter VII: Knowledge

The fruit of the tree of knowledge always drives man from some paradise or other; and even the paradise of fools is not an unpleasant abode while it is habitable.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, from Outspoken Essays, Second Series (1922). The Idea of Progress

Baseball men have not yet reached the revelation of Sir Francis Bacon, which was in essence that since all men live in darkness, who believes something is not a test of whether it is true or false. I have spent years trying to get people to ask simple questions: What is the evidence, and what does it mean?
~ Bill James, This Time Let's Not Eat the Bones (1989).

Life is one long eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
~ William James, An Address to the Harvard Divinity Students (1884). The Dilemma of Determinism

We keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can.
~ William James

Shades of grey wherever I go
The more I find out the less that I know
Black and white is how it should be
But shades of grey are the colors I see.
~ Billy Joel, in River Of Dreams (1993 album). Shades of Grey

I hold every day lost, in which I acquire no new knowledge of man or nature.
~ Sir William Jones, Letter to Lord Althorp (25 August 1787)

Although humankind inherently "desires to know", if open access to, and unlimited development of, knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction, then common sense demands that we re-examine our reverence for knowledge.
~ Bill Joy, in Wired Magazine (April 2000). Forfeiting The Future

Those of us who think knowledge can be acquired without pursuing the path of love, mistake. The soul is aware of what it requires. It demands altruism, and so long as that is absent, so long will mere intellectual study lead to nothing.
~ William Quan Judge

It is almost a commonplace to affirm that all our knowledge of existence lies between two opposite realms of ignorance.
~ William Angus Knight, The Philosophy of the Beautiful: Being Outlines of the History of Aesthetics (1891).

Statistics is the art of stating in precise terms that which one does not know.
~ William Kruskal, in American ScientistMagazine, Vol. 35 (1964). Statistics, Moliere, and Henry Adams

We commonly say, that a man is known by his companions; but it is certain, that a man is much more known by the books that he converses with.
~ William Law, A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection (1726).

We know not fully what we are,
Still less what we might be.
~ William Edward Hartpole (E.H.) Lecky, from Poems (1891). Undeveloped Lives

I know thou, Vast One, knowest me.
~ William Douw (W.D.) Lighthall, from Thoughts, Moods and Ideals (1887). The Artist's Prayer

It is a great nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from Ten Novels and Their Authors (1954).

It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, quoted in Foreign Devil (1972).

It wasn't until quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, "I don't know."
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949).

Knowledge is a will-of-the-wisp, fluttering ever out of the traveller's reach; and a weary journey must be endured before it is ever seen.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Mrs. Craddock (1902).

Man can know nothing, for his senses are his only means of knowledge, and they can give no certainty.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Magician (1908).

[Psychologists should use their self-knowledge to recall] some devastating conflict of desires, some moral struggle hardly won, some intense pain, some base temptation, some impulse of profound pity or of tender devotion, of fierce anger or horrible fear. Is there not something radically wrong with a system of thought (i.e. behaviourism) which tells us that these experiences are of no account in the world?
~ William McDougall, An Outline of Psychology (1923).

Between no place of mine and no place of yours,
You'd have thought I'd know the way by now
Just from thinking it over.
~ William Stanley (W.S.) Merwin, from The Moving Target (1963). The Nails

[W]e know
from the beginning that the darkness
is beyond us there is no explaining
the dark it is only the light
that we keep feeling a need to account for.
~ William Stanley (W.S.) Merwin, The Pupil (2001). The Marfa Lights

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something.
~ Wilson Mizner

There's something about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless.
~ Wilson Mizner

And I think knowledge may be sorrow with a man, unless he loves.
~ William Mountford, Euthanasy: Or, Happy Talk Towards the End of Life (1848). Chapter XX

Better know nothing than half-know many things.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885).

On this earth, one pays dearly for every kind of mastery. ... For having a specialty one pays by also being the victim of this specialty. But you would have it otherwise -- cheaper and fairer and above all more comfortable -- isn't that right, my dear contemporaries?
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882).

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

There is no knowledge of true being. The world is fundamentally in a state of becoming.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The consciousness of knowing little, need not beget a distrust of that which he does know.
~ William Paley, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802). Chapter One: State of the Argument

When you don't know that you don't know, it's a lot different than when you do know that you don't know.
~ Bill Parcells

He that has more knowledge than judgment, is made for another man's use more than his own.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part I. Knowledge

The truest end of Life, is, to know the Life that never ends.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part I. Religion

A knowledge of men and women as they really are, is essential to any one who wishes to succeed in any business or profession.
~ William Lyon ("Billy") Phelps, in The Rotarian Magazine, Vol. 35, No. 2 (August 1929). Literature as a Necessity of Life

I thoroughly believe in a university education for both men and women; but I believe a knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valuable than a college course without the Bible. For in the Bible, we have profound thought beautifully expressed; we have the nature of boys and girls, of men and women, more accurately charted than in the work of any modern novelist or playwright. You can learn more about human nature by reading the Bible than by living in New York.
~ William Lyon ("Billy") Phelps, Human Nature in the Bible (1922). Introduction

Know thyself. A Yale undergraduate left on his door a placard for the janitor on which was written, "Call me at 7 o'clock; it is absolutely necessary that I get up at seven. Make no mistake. Keep knocking until I answer." Under this he had written: "Try again at ten."
~ William Lyon ("Billy") Phelps

You shouldn't speak until you know what you're talking about. That's why I get uncomfortable with interviews. Reporters ask me what I feel China should do about Tibet. Who cares what I think China should do? I'm a f---ing actor! They hand me a script. I act. I'm here for entertainment, basically, when you whittle everything away. I'm a grown man who puts on makeup.
~ (William) Brad Pitt, in Time magazine (13 October 1997).

You and I, who know more than anyone else, only know half of the solution.
~ William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), from Cabbages And Kings (1904). Money Maze

Perhaps never before have knowledge, techniques, and methods been so bountiful. Canoes must be paddled harder than ever just to keep up with the knowledge explosion.
~ William Watson Purkey, in the Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice (1992). An Introduction To Invitational Theory

Here is a great world full of human beings, and wonderful things, and the more we know of them the more we find we can help ourselves and each other.
~ William Brighty Rands, from Lilliput Lectures (1871). Science and Philosophy

Wisdom and Love, not Wrath and Chance
Showed me this fair inheritance;
And till I know it as I ought,
I know not all they meant and thought,
When first they showed my world to me,
Nor all that I was meant to be.
~ William Brighty Rands, from Lilliput Lectures (1871). Science and Philosophy

A Liberal is a man who wants to use his own ideas on things in preference to generations who, he knows, know more than he does.
~ Will Rogers, in The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949).

This would be a great time in the world for some man to come along that knew something.
~ Will Rogers

Well, all I know is just what I read in the papers.
~ Will Rogers, in The New York Times (30 September 1923).

What all of us know put together don't mean anything. Nothing don't mean anything. We are just here for a spell and pass on. Any man that thinks that Civilization has advanced is an egotist.
~ Will Rogers, Weekly Articles (5 July 1931).

The most successful television is done in eight-second thoughts, and the things I know about basketball, motivation and people go deeper than that.
~ William Felton (Bill) Russell (on being a color commentator for televised basketball games), The Sacramento Bee.

What we don't need to know for achievement, we need to know for our pleasure. Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
~ William L. Safire, in The New York Times (1 June 1986). Class Cleavage

I'm a student. I study all things. All. All. And when my study reveals something of beauty in a place or in a person where by all rights only ugliness or death should be revealed, then I know how full of goodness this life is. And that's a good thing to know. That's a truth I shall always seek to verify.
~ William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life (1939 play).

You act as if you know more than I'll ever know, but I've forgotten more than you'll ever know.
~ William Saroyan, Jim Dandy, Fat Man in a Famine (1947).

And out of knowledge, wisdom came unsought.
~ William Sawyer, from Ten Miles From Town: With Poems (1866). Poems: Sigurd the Saxon

Whole areas of knowledge and information have been defined into nonexistence because the system cannot know, understand, control, or measure them.
~ Anne Wilson Schaef

Divine knowledge is not as the light of the moon, to sleep by; but as the light of the sun, to work by.
~ William Secker, from The Nonsuch Professor in His Meridian Splendor, or the Singular Actions of Sanctified Christians (1660).

Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act V, scene i

Go to your bosom;
Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.
~ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure. Act II, scene ii

I never knew so young a body with so old a head.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act IV, scene i

O! what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. Act IV, scene i

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act IV, scene v

His knowledge of books had in some degree diminished his knowledge of the world; or rather the external forms and manners of it.
~ William Shenstone, A Character (1735).

Most of our knowledge is hereditary; and even our ability to acquire knowledge, is derived, in a great degree, from our contact with other minds.
~ William Buell Sprague, in The World's Laconics: Or, The Best Thoughts of the Best Authors (1853). Introduction

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
~ William Stafford, from West of Your City (1960). A Ritual to Read to Each Other

[T]o wander because I know the road,
And find stray things, wherever they come from.
~ William Stafford, from Allegiances (1970). The Preacher at the Corner

The man who thinks he knows everything about any subject renounces all hope of learning anything about it.
~ William J. Stevens

Even imperfect knowledge is better than none. All our knowledge is imperfect. There is no subject in morals or in law, the extremest depths of which man has ever sounded. The unknown greatly transcends the known.
~ William Strong, from Two Lectures Upon The Relations Of Civil Law To Church Polity, Discipline, And Property (1875). First Lecture

Philosophy seeks knowledge for the sake of understanding, while religion seeks knowledge for the sake of worship.
~ William Temple (Archbishop of York), from Nature, Man and God: Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Glasgow in the Academic Years 1932-1933 and 1933-1934 (1934).

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century (1857-59). Chapter LVI

The world can pry out everything about us which it has a mind to know. But then there is this consolation, which men will never accept in their own cases, that the world doesn't care.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century (1857-59). Chapter XLVI

A myth is never known; it is a relationship between the known and the unknowable.
~ William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture (1981).

Science wrought to its uttermost becomes myth. History wrought to its uttermost becomes myth. But what is myth that it returns to mind even when we would most escape it?
~ William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture (1981).

That shoreline where the island of knowing meets the unfathomable sea of our own being is the landscape of myth.
~ William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture (1981).

Take me off from the curiosity of knowing only to know; from the vanity of knowing only to be known; and from the folly of pretending to know more than I do know.
~ William Waller, in Divine Meditations Upon Several Occasions (1680). V. Upon The Contentment I Have In My Books And Study

It wasn't to my advantage to talk about anything that he had done. It certainly wasn't to either one of us. And he, of course, didn't want it to be known. Neither did I. I didn't want it to be known either.
~ Essie Mae Washington-Williams (of her father), CBS TV "60 Minutes II" (17 December 2003). Essie Mae On Strom Thurmond

Knowledge is sympathy, charity, kindness,
Ignorance only is feeder of hell.
~ William Watson, from Wordworth's Grave and Other Poems (1890). Miscellaneous Sonnets, Lyrics, Etc. England to Ireland (February 1888)

Ideas are the Form, facts the Material, of our structure.
~ William Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Vol. 2 (1840). Part II. Book XI, Chapter V. Of Certain Characteristics of Scientific Induction

And doubting mortals hardly know
By whose command the breezes blow
Which fan the smiling land.
~ William Whitehead, from Poems on Several Occasions (1754). The Enthusiast. An Ode

[Y]ou may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.
~ William Wilberforce, Speech, House of Commons (1791).

Not in a moment, or an hour, or day
The knowledge comes; the power is far too great,
To win in any desultory way.
No soul is worthy till it learns to wait.
Day after day be patient, then, oh, soul;
Month after month--till, lo! the goal! the goal!
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from New Thought Pastels (1906). Knowledge

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.
~ George F. Will, in Newsweek magazine (3 August 1981).

I think that the gifts of time and space are the two greatest gifts we have. But we have to know how to utilize them.
~ Billy Dee Williams, interview in Ebony Magazine, Vol. XXXVI, No. 3 (January 1981). Billy Dee Williams

And the ones that know you so well are the ones that can swallow you whole.
~ Dar Williams, The Ocean

This heart of mine
will never see
what everybody knows
but me.
~ Hank Williams, Sr., You Win Again

Although I may not give up searching out the mystery, I do not want to torture myself to know the unknowable.
~ Philip W. Williams, in When A Loved One Dies (1976). A Defeated Enemy

I hear people of my race say that going there is an awakening experience. They just felt at home and in a connection. I have been desperate to go there and I have an opportunity to feel and see my history. You don't know yourself until you know your history.
~ Serena Williams (on visiting Africa), Press Conference, Wimbledon, England (24 June 2003).

By the time you know what to do, you're too old to do it.
~ Theodore Samuel ("Ted") Williams

We're trying to find something, but we don't even know what it is.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Summer and Smoke (1948).

We cannot get to our knowledge because the world is too loud. And we tend to make it louder as we cry out in pain, pretending we are singing.
~ Marianne Williamson, A Woman's Worth (1993).

All knowledge is not nourishment.
~ Nathaniel Parker (N.P.) Willis, from Poem delivered before the Society of United Brothers at Brown University, with Other Poems (1831). Poem

He who binds
His soul to knowledge, steals the key of heaven.
~ Nathaniel Parker (N.P.) Willis, from Poem delivered before the Society of United Brothers at Brown University, with Other Poems (1831). The Scholar of Thebet Ben Khorat

A united system of knowledge is the surest means of identifying the still unexlored domains of reality.
~ Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998). Chapter 12: To What End?

Knowledge is a great calmer of people's minds.
~ John Wilson, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (April 1822). Noctes Ambrosianae. No. II

If you think you know what the hell is going on, you're probably full of shit.
~ Robert Anton Wilson

That knowledge, which helps to reform the heart, is of much more use to us than that which only enlightens the understanding.
~ (Bishop) Thomas Wilson, in Maxims of Piety and of Christianity (first published in 1781).

Ah, too late we come to know
What is false and what is true.
~ William Winter, from The Queen's Domain, and Other Poems (1858). The Last Scene

Let others that know more speak as they know.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1850 edition). Book III: Residence at Cambridge

Many are the joys
Of youth; but oh! what happiness to live
When every hour brings palpable access
Of knowledge, when all knowledge is delight,
And sorrow is not there.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805). Book II: Childhood and School-time (Continued)

Oh, be wiser thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree

Empty eyeballs knew
That knowledge increases unreality, that
Mirror on mirror mirrored is all the show.
~ William Butler Yeats, from Last Poems (1938-39). The Statue

I have no question:
It is enough, I know what fixed the station
Of star and cloud.
And knowing all, I cry
That what so God has willed
On that instant be fulfilled,
Though that be my damnation.
~ William Butler Yeats, The Hour-Glass (1912 version).

I would be -- for no knowledge is worth a straw --
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Wild Swans at Coole (1919 edition). The Dawn

It would need a great deal of wisdom to know what it is we want to know.
~ William Butler Yeats, The Hour-Glass (1912 version).

We must be tender to all budding things.
~ William Butler Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire (1894 play).

Nothing we know of the why or the where --
To swamp, or jungle, or wastes of snow --
Nothing we know, and little we care.
~ William Young, Wishmakers' Town (1898 edition). The Pawns