8 Quotes about Knowledge by Michel de Montaigne (Free list)

If you’re looking for Michel de Montaigne quotes about knowledge, you’ve come to the right place. Here at Inspiring Lizard we collect thought-provoking quotes from interesting people. And in this article we share a list of the 8 most interesting quotes about knowledge by Michel de Montaigne. Let’s get inspired!

Michel de Montaigne quotes about knowledge

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

— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

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

— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

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

— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

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

— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

…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.

— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

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.

— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers set chatting together, said to them, “Either I am much deceived, or by your cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no very deep discourse.” To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied: “ ’Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of the verb Ballo be spelt with adouble L, or that hunt after the derivation of the comparatives Cheirou and Beltiou, and the superlatives Cheiriotou and Beliotou, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science; but as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad.

— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

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

— Michel de Montaigne

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

— Michel de Montaigne