Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from severalpieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to myown governing method, ignorance.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

There is an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it

Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.

...were these Essays of mine considerable enough to deserve a critical judgment, it might then, I think, fallout that they would not much take with common and vulgar capacities, nor be very acceptable to the singular and excellent sort of men; the first would not understand them enough, and the last too much; and so they may hover in the middle region.

We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

We can be knowledgeable with another man's knowledge, but we can't be wise with another man's wisdom.

Nichts wird so fest geglaubt wie das, was wir am wenigsten wissen.