The dictum «A well-educated person must know something about everything and everything about something» appeared in England in the middle of the XIX century. It was usually attributed to a lawyer and politician to Henry Peter Brougham; later (in the form: «Try to learn...») to Thomas Huxley. Both of these attributions are apparently legendary, and one of the sources of the saying could be a fragment from Pascal’s «Thoughts». In the XX century, the saying came from here: «A scientist know more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing; and a philosopher know less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything».
familiar sayings; culture; education; erudition; H.P. Brougham; T. Huxley; Samuel Alfred Warner; B. Pascal; H.E. Strickland; S. Lem; Robert E. Swain.