What's the EXACT quote?

[sraun]

There's a quote that goes something like 'The beginning of wisdom is to admit ignorance.' I'm trying to find the actual phrasing, and attribution, and my google-fu is failing me. I thought it was Chinese, Confucius (sp?), or some such.

Help?

Comments

[debmats.livejournal.com]

Pierre Abelard
The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.--Chinese proverb (may also be Thomas Jefferson)


didn't find anything closer. Good luck!

[rvrjoe775.livejournal.com]

The Biblical text is "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" and anything else is likely paraphrasing.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom is from Bertrand Russell. Is that closer to what you're after?

[dr-a-nightfall.livejournal.com]

I think it also goes back to Socrates- somehting along the lines of "The wisest man is the man who knows that he knows nothing.".

[soarhead.livejournal.com]

Howard Ashby Kranz has a song that says 'Ignorance is Large'

Words to live by...

[filkferengi]

Also, his cd rocks!

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

From Bartlett:

The Psalms and the Russell quotes already mentioned.

Gustav Flaubert, in a letter to George Sand: "Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom". Perhaps not quite what you were looking for. ;<)

Horace, Epistles: "To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom." Closer, but not quite there.

That's all Bartlett has on "beginning of wisdom".

Google certainly turned up a lot of folks with their own opinions on the beginning of wisdom.

Variations of the various combinations of knows and knows not are variously attributed to Persian, Burton from Arabic, Chinese proverb and Confucious. And maybe to more. I stopped looking.

[harimad.livejournal.com]

This sounds like the typical faux-Chinese/Confucius attribution to me. If anything, the statement is Zen, not Buddhist and certainly not Confucian - which values hierarchy and the value of the-word-from-above.