Ambrose Bierce Quotes on Wisdom & Knowledge (18 Quotes)

IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.

CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.

Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

NIRVANA, n. In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it.

UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

NECTAR, n. A drink served at banquets of the Olympian deities. The secret of its preparation is lost, but the modern Kentuckians believe that they come pretty near to a knowledge of its chief ingredient.

KNOWLEDGE, n. -- The small body of ignorance that we arrange and classify.

Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.

APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

FASHION, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. The Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one the knowledge and the dream.

OUTCOME, n. A particular type of disappointment .... judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense the wisdom of an act is to be juded by the light that the doer had when he performed it.

ROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.