Knowledge/Wisdom:

The following quotes illustrate the topic's ambiguity.  Use these to establish the scope of your topic--to begin to specify the subtopics that verbalize various differing opinions on the same issue--to begin to develop a guide to your reading.

"All men by nature desire to know."    Aristotle

"Knowledge is Power. . . . Knowledge and human power are synonyms."    Francis Bacon

"I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well."    Peter Benchley

"Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify."    Ambrose Bierce

"Pocket all your knowledge with your watch and never pull it out in company unless desired."    Lord Chesterfield

"I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."    Clarence Darrow

"Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul."    Will Durant

"Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance."    Will Durant

"Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down."    George Eliot

"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge."    Kahlil Gibran

"All that men really understand is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and existence; to what they have an opportunity to know; and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture."    William Hazlitt

"Mistakes are their own instructors. "    Horace

"If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?"    Thomas Huxley

"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority"    Thomas Huxley

"Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconcieved notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.     Thomas Huxley

"Knowledge is of two kinds; we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."    Samuel Johnson

"Man is not weak--knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength."    Samuel Johnson

         I keep six honest serving-men
           [They taught me all I knew];
         Their names are What and Why and When
           And How and Where and Who
            -- Rudyard Kipling

"I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in this world. "    Margaret Mead

"The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth
         reading. "    H.L. Mencken

"To appear to be on the inside and know more than others about what is going on is a great temptation for most people. It is a rare person who is willing to seem to know less than he does."    Eleanor Rooseveldt

"In all affairs, love, religion, politics, or business, it's a healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on things you have long taken for granted."    Bertrand Russel

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge."    Bertrand Russel
"As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious."    Albert Schweitzer

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers."    Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."    Henry David Thoreau

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn by no other way."    Mark Twain

"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows."    Mark Twain

"That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next."    John Stuart Mill

"Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar."    William Wordsworth

"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err."    Mahatma Gandhi

"One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know."    John Kenneth Galbraith

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."    Mark Twain

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."    William James

"Among mortals second thoughts are wisest."    Euripides

"Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar."    William Wordsworth

"Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today."    Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study"    Francis Bacon

"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems."    Mahatma Gandhi

"Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short."    John Henry Newman

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."    Theodore Roosevelt

"Anything you're good at contributes to happiness."    Bertrand Russell

Bacon, Francis.  "Of Truth."
Berry, Wendall.  The Loss of the University."  Irish Place.
Churchill, Winston.  The Second World War.  Vol. 5.  Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979.
Dillard, Annie.  Teaching a Stone to Talk:  Expeditions and Encounters.
New York:  Harper and Row, 1982.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.  "The Intellect." Essays and Lectures.  Ed.Joel Porte. New York, NY:  Literary Classics of the United States of America,  Inc., 1983.  Pages 415-430.
Golding, William.  Lord of the Flies.
Lewis, David.  W. E. B. DuBois:  Biography of a Race.  New York: Henry,Holt, and Co., 1993.
Machiavelli Nicolo.  The Prince.
McCourt, Frank.  Angela's Ashes.  New York:  Scribner, 1996.

Puller, Lewis B.  Fortunate Son.  New York:  Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Civil Disobedience.  New York:
New American Library, 1980.
Twain, Mark.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.