Knowledge

The root-word "buddha" means to wake up, to know, to understand; and he or she who wakes up and understands is call a Buddha. It is as simple as that. The capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love is called Buddha nature.

One must love the mirror in the face of truth, only if one loves the outlook of your inner compassion.

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

Ideas often have results that are the opposite of those their authors anticipated as consequences are rarely those expected or hoped for by the original thinkers. . . . Yet the cure of bad or misapplied ideas is not the refutation of ideas and thinkers but better and corrected ideas.

Only the educated are free.

Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad an introduction. In solitude, a solace, and in society, an ornament. It hastens vice, it guides virtue; it gives, at once, grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

The essence of education is not to stuff you full of facts, but to help you discover your uniqueness, to teach you how to develop it, and then show you how to give it away.

If our knowledge is, as I believe, only an island in an infinite sea of ignorance, how can we in our short lifetime find satisfaction in exploring our little island? How can we persuade ourselves to be exhilarated by our meager knowledge and yet not be discouraged by the ocean vistas?

History is valuable, to begin with, because it is true; and this, though not the whole of its value, is the foundation and condition of all the rest. That all knowledge, as such, is in some degree good, would appear to be at least probable; and the knowledge of every historical fact possesses this element of goodness, even if it posses no other.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

Three real teachers in a lifetime is the very best of luck. I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three had these things in common. They all loved what they were doing. They did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and precious.

A man of clear ideas errs grievously if he imagines that whatever is seen confusedly does not exist; it belongs to him, when he meets with such a thing, to dispel the midst, and fix the outlines of the vague form which is looming through it.

In our time, what is at issue is the very nature of man, the image we have of his limits and possibilities as a man. History is not yet done with its exploration of the limits and meanings of 'human nature.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin - more even than death... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

Thoughts are free and subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they tower above the light of nature...create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy from which new arts flow.

Great men are they who see that spiritual thought is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

The mind is the man, and knowledge mind; a man is but what he knoweth.

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so we are.

Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand.  Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.  You have to be able to transcend your knowledge the way people climb a ladder.  If you are on the fifth step of a ladder and think that you are very high, there is no hope for you to climb to the sixth.

Reading without thinking will confuse you.
Thinking without reading will place you in danger. 

True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion.

Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

We are slaves of what we don't know;
of what we know we are masters.
Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover
and understand its cause and workings,
we overcome it by the very knowing.
The primary purpose of meditation is to become more conscious
and familiar with our inner life.
The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life.

"Lots of people talk to animals," said Pooh.
"Not that many listen though."
"That's the problem."

To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

While scholars are comparing and contrasting theories, debating intellectual questions, and dividing humankind into categories, the world is changed by persons with faith, spirit, emotion, compassion, intuition, and irrational thinking.

To apply the golden rule adequately, we need knowledge and imagination. We need to know what effect our actions have on the lives of others. And we need to be able to imagine ourselves, vividly and accurately, in the other person's place on the receiving end of the action. With knowledge, imagination, and the golden rule, we can progress far in our moral thinking.

He who knows others is wise. 
He who knows himself is enlightened.

The power of concentration is the only key to the treasure-house of knowledge. 

My heart is singing this morning. 
A miracle has happened! 
The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind,
and behold, all things are changed!

As knowledge increases, wonder deepens.

The intellectual knowledge of eternal things pertains to wisdom; the rational knowledge of temporal things, to science.

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.
1908, notebook

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.

When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

When knowledge is scant or conflicting, folklore takes over.