Quotes

“What you know, you know; what you don’t know, you don’t know. This is true wisdom.”

– Confucius (a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the 6th-5th centuries BC

“It is the historian’s function, not to make us clever for the next time, but to make us wise forever.”

– Jacob Burckhardt (a Swiss historian of art and culture and an influential figure in the historiography of both fields)

“Not having heard something is not as good as having heard it; having heard it is not as good as having seen it; having seen it is not as good as knowing it; knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice.”

• Xun Kuang, known as Xunzi (a Chinese Confucian philosopher of the 3rd century BC)