Anyone who has looked deeply into the world may guess how much wisdom lies in the superficiality of men. The instinct that preserves them teaches them to be flighty light, and false. — Friedrich Nietzsche
General knowledges are those knowledges that idiots possess. — William Blake
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle. — Kahlil Gibran
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot. — Albert Einstein
Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience. — Clarence Day
What is good to know is difficult to learn — Greek Proverbs
Knowledge, or verbal facility, is no proof that you know what you're talking about. — Terence McKenna
Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge. — Isaac Bashevis Singer
If a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, a lot was lethal. — Tom Sharpe
When knowledge is limited - it leads to folly... When knowledge exceeds a certain limit, it leads to exploitation. — Abu Bakr
Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot. — Unknown
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. — Confucius
A little knowledge and an over-abundance of zeal always tends to be harmful. In the area involving religious truths, it can be disastrous. — Kathryn Kuhlman
Being Superficial Quotes
A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed. — Nelson Mandela
Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others. — Charles R. Swindoll
Give yourself to prayer, to reading and meditation on divine truths: strive to penetrate to the bottom of them and never be content with a superficial knowledge. — David Brainerd
Any fool can know. The point is to understand.
Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood. — Friedrich Nietzsche
I would love to see women be able to be powerful, complex, smart, opinionated and taken seriously, even if they are beautiful. Even more, I would love to see women held to different standards, other than the superficial ones that we're held to. — Sayings
There have been many people for whom limitations, failure, loss, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility and compassion. It made them more real. — Eckhart Tolle
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living the other helps you make a life.
Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony. — Paulo Coelho
God will have life to be real; we will be damned, but it shall be theatrical. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. — Thomas Paine
"To be or not to be is" [by William Shakespeare] beyond anything I can comprehend. I understand it on a superficial level, but the depth of it just boggles my mind. I think it's probably the greatest of all speeches ever written. — Al Pacino
Superficial Quotes
Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love. — Cornel West
It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance ; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. — Chris Hedges
Operating superficially, the mind is random in its activity and stale in its insights and images. However, with practice and experience the mind is freed from the skull, and the fresh and new can appear as though for the first time. It — Matsuo Basho
Knowledge is having the right answer. Intelligence is asking the right questions.
The Church right now has more fashion than passion, is more pathetic than prophetic, is more superficial than supernatural. — Leonard Ravenhill
The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum. — Charles Caleb Colton
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. — Erich Maria Remarque
There is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism — Alvin Plantinga
The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy. — Antoine Rivarol
As we get past our superficial material wants and instant gratification we connect to a deeper part of ourselves, as well as to others, and the universe. — Judith Wright
Superficial Things Quotes
This is the curse of superficial religion: the constant attempt to do outward things apart from inward transformation. — David Platt
Anything that is as old as racism is in the blood line of the nation. It's not any superficial thing-that attitude is in the blood and we have to educate about it. — Nannie Helen Burroughs
To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me. If I have an emotion, before I die, that's deeper than any emotion that I've ever had, then I will paint a more powerful picture that will have nothing to do with just technique, but will go beyond it. — Andrew Wyeth
All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.
I have always found men who were funny, irresistible. It's rare that I ever based love on looks or superficial things, but it a guy made me laugh-and that didn't mean he had to be in comedy professionally - I was hooked. — Gilda Radner
[People] want me to finish things. But I see them in such a way and paint them accordingly. ... Nothing is simpler than to complete pictures in a superficial sense. Never does one lie so cleverly as then. — Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
One of the great things about Parkinson's, in a superficial way, is it relieved me of vanity. I don't worry about what I look like, because it's literally out of my hands. But on a deeper level, it gives you a real humility, because you have to deal every day with the fact that you compromise. — Michael J. Fox
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. — Thomas Paine
Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens. — Franz Kafka
I find it [science] analytical, pretentious and superficial-largely because it does not address itself to dreams, chance, laughter, feelings, or paradox-in other words,-all the things I love the most. — Luis Bunuel
Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found. — Edgar Allan Poe
For beautiful eye look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.
When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. — Freeman Dyson
I do not approve the maxim which desires a man to know a little of everything. Superficial knowledge, knowledge without principles, is almost always useless and sometimes harmful knowledge. — Luc De Clapiers
He who speaks a bit of a foreign language has more delight in it than he who speaks it well; pleasure goes along with superficial knowledge. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.
Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of genius. — Luc De Clapiers
I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. — Katherine Mansfield
A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail. Index-hunter is a term used mockingly, meaning one who acquires superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes. The '[holding] the eel of science by the tail' allusion was used in 1728 by Alexander Pope (q.v.). — Tobias Smollett
Ask courageous questions.
Do not be satisfied with superficial answers.
Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny.
Be aware of human fallibility.
Cherish your species and your planet. — Carl Sagan
A superficial knowledge is not enough. It must be a knowledge capable of analyzing a situation quickly and making an immediate decision. — Cavett Robert
Nothing disturbs me more than superficiality and mere sloganizing on matters of public policy, and the suspicion that what the speaker is saying represents the full extent of his knowledge on the subject. — Preston Manning
We judge so superficially of things, that common words and actions spoke and done in an agreeable manner, with some knowledge of what passes in the world, often succeed beyond the greatest ability. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld
We judge matters so superficially that ordinary acts and words, done and spoken with some flair and some knowledge of worldly matters, often succeed better than the greatest cleverness. — Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable
Without a complex knowledge of one's place and without the faithfulness to one's place on which such knowledge depends, it is inevitable that the place will be used carelessly, and eventually destroyed. Without such knowledge and faithfulness, moreover, the culture of a country will be superficial and decorative, functional only insofar as it may be a symbol of prestige, the affectation of an elite or "in" group. — Wendell Berry
Science is a line, art a superficies, and life or the knowledge of God, a solid. — Coventry Patmore
The specualtist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity; and still, as he inquires more, perceives only that he knows less. — Samuel Johnson
Quality, service, cleanliness, and value. — Sayings
Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God’s grace. — John Stott
The core of understanding lies in the individual mind, and until that is touched everything is uncertain and superficial. Truth cannot be perceived until we come to fully understand our potential and ourselves. After all, knowledge in the martial arts ultimately means self-knowledge. — Bruce Lee
Index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail.
Index-learning is a term used to mock pretenders who acquire superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes. — Alexander Pope
To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld
We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor. — Arthur Schopenhauer
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of superficial knowledge quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about superficial knowledge to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of superficial knowledge quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.