There Is No More Profitable Investment Than Knowledge
You can leave material goods for your children, but the best investment is to provide them with knowledge. With them, they will be able to fend for themselves. One of Benjamin Franklin’s most famous quotes reflects this idea; “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest”. An investment for oneself and for others because knowledge is the greatest power that we can acquire.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1906 thanks to his work on the structure of the nervous system, told us that the human brain is like a coin machine. If you throw unclean metal into it, you will get slag. If you put gold in it, you will get some fantastic coins. This sentence perfectly sums up how important it is to properly nourish our brain with books and knowledge. These will help us understand the world better.
Our knowledge necessarily has an end while our ignorance is necessarily infinite. The bottom line is that we know a little while knowing a lot. It is impressive to see how such a small knowledge can give so much power.
In this new era, it is knowledge that will set you free, not work
Since the time of Socrates, we have known that knowledge brings us freedom and frees us from ignorance. However, in antiquity, only the wise could access a part of knowledge. From now on, any person is a creator and distributor of information thanks to the use of the new channels of the Internet. This creates an unlimited network of knowledge.
We have now eliminated physical, geographic, economic and social barriers when it comes to acquiring knowledge. Anyone can have understanding at hand. But then, why are there fewer and fewer readers? Why are we investing less in culture? It seems that we have removed all barriers except the most important: knowing that only knowledge can set us free.
Socrates said he was wise not because he knew more than his contemporaries. He said it because he was aware of his own ignorance. Before making a decision or saying something, he made sure that things were true. He was so convinced that understanding sets us free that, for him, if people came to understand what was right or right, they would choose the right and the just. No one would consciously choose evil. Those who choose evil do so out of ignorance. If a baker bakes bad bread, it’s because he doesn’t know how to do it, not because he wants to bake bad bread.
Knowledge is the light that will illuminate our path
“Knowledge is the light that will illuminate our path”. This phrase from Robert Fisher, author of the book The Knight in the Rusty Armor, conveys an optimistic and constructive vision of human potential. Knowledge is the discovery of our own capacities and limitations, as well as the search for possible solutions to overcome them.
A person cannot learn and run at the same time. It has to stay in one place for a while. In life, we will not find the exits until we have learned what we need to learn.
Knowledge is the light that illuminates our path. This means that the more knowledge we have, the more light there will be in us. Nature has provided us with the seeds of knowledge, not knowledge per se.
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