Real Knowledge Is To Know The

From Analects Book II, Chapter 17, in which Confucius addresses the nature of knowledge. The original reads: "由，誨女知之乎？知之為知之，不知為不知，是知也" — roughly, "You, shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it — this is knowledge." It is one of the clearest statements in the Confucian corpus that intellectual honesty — the accurate appraisal of one's own understanding — is itself the foundation of wisdom.