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Knowledge Quotes

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Knowledge Quotes

“The regularity with which we conclude that further advances in a particular field are impossible seems equaled only by the regularity with which events prove that we are of too limited vision. And it always seems to be those who have the fullest opportunity to know who are the most limited in view. What, then, is the trouble? I think that one answer should be: we do not realize sufficiently that the unknown is absolutely infinite, and that new knowledge is always being produced.”

ThinkingKnowsShouldSeemsScienceOpportunityRealizingAnswersViewsVisionKnowledgeImpossibleTroubleEventsFieldsParticularProveAbsolutesInfiniteProductionsRegularityNew Knowledge
Author:Willis R. Whitney
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“The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable posession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is a man who has so much as to be out of danger?”

IfsKnowsMenMindBelieveMayLittlesRealScienceKnowledgeDangerousDangerValuableGenuineQuantityAdagesDangerous ThingsLittle KnowledgeKnowledge Is Dangerous
Author:Thomas Huxley
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“The whole question of imagination in science is often misunderstood by people in other disciplines. ... They overlook the fact that whatever we are allowed to imagine in science must be consistent with everything else we know.”

PeopleKnowsWholeFactsScienceImaginationKnowledgeImagineDisciplineAccountsConsistentSelf DisciplineConsistencyMisunderstood
Book:The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II: The New Millennium Edition: Mainly Electromagnetism and Matter
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“The whole value of science consists in the power which it confers upon us of applying to one object the knowledge acquired from like objects; and it is only so far, therefore, as we can discover and register resemblances that we can turn our observations to account.”

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Book:The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method
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“Through seven figures come sensations for a man; there is hearing for sounds, sight for the visible, nostril for smell, tongue for pleasant or unpleasant tastes, mouth for speech, body for touch, passages outwards and inwards for hot or cold breath. Through these come knowledge or lack of it.”

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Book:Hippocrates
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“To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.”

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Book:Scientific Papers; Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology
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“To inquisitive minds like yours and mine the reflection that the quantity of human knowledge bears no proportion to the quantity of human ignorance must be in one view rather pleasing, viz., that though we are to live forever we may be continually amused and delighted with learning something new.”

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Book:Writings, Collected and Ed. with a Life and Introd
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“To unfold the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and of ourselves is attained or matured, is a object which does not stand in need of commendation to a rational mind.”

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Book:An Investigation of the Laws of Thought: On which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities
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“Train yourselves. Don't wait to be fed knowledge out of a book. Get out and seek it. Make explorations. Do your own research work. Train your hands and your mind. Become curious. Invent your own problems and solve them. You can see things going on all about you. Inquire into them. Seek out answers to your own questions. There are many phenomena going on in nature the explanation of which cannot be found in books. Find out why these phenomena take place. Information a boy gets by himself is enormously more valuable than that which is taught to him in school.”

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Author:Irving Langmuir
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“We are apt to think we know what time is because we can measure it, but no sooner do we reflect upon it than that illusion goes. So it appears that the range of the measureable is not the range of the knowable. There are things we can measure, like time, but yet our minds do not grasp their meaning. There are things we cannot measure, like happiness or pain, and yet their meaning is perfectly clear to us.”

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Author:Robert Morrison MacIver
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“We do not ask what hope of gain makes a little bird warble, since we know that it takes delight in singing because it is for that very singing that the bird was made, so there is no need to ask why the human mind undertakes such toil in seeking out these secrets of the heavens. ... And just as other animals, and the human body, are sustained by food and drink, so the very spirit of Man, which is something distinct from Man, is nourished, is increased, and in a sense grows up on this diet of knowledge, and is more like the dead than the living if it is touched by no desire for these things.”

IfsKnowsMenNeedsMindHumansLittlesMadeBodyScienceSpiritDesireAsksHeavenGrowsAnimalSecretKnowledgeGrowing UpDrinkSingingBirdGainsDelightSeekingDietsTouchedHuman MindToilHuman BodyFood And Drink
Author:Johannes Kepler
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“Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science.”

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Book:George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion
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“Without the suitable conditions life could not exist. But both life and its conditions set forth the operations of inscrutable Power. We know not its origin; we know not its end. And the presumption, if not the degradation, rests with those who place upon the throne of the universe a magnified image of themselves, and make its doings a mere colossal imitation of their own. Wonder was the motive that led people to philosophy ... wonder is a kind of desire in knowledge. It is the cause of delight because it carries with it the hope of discovery.”

PeopleIfsKnowsKindEndsPhilosophyDesireUniverseCausesWonderKnowledgeConditionsDiscoveryMereDelightOperationsMotiveCarrieImitationThronesSuitableDegradationPresumptionDoingsColossalInscrutable
Author:Thomas Aquinas
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“Wonder [admiratio astonishment, marvel] is a kind of desire for knowledge. The situation arises when one sees an effect and does not know its cause, or when the cause of the particular effect is one that exceeds his power of understanding. Hence, wonder is a cause of pleasure insofar as there is annexed the hope of attaining understanding of that which one wants to know. ... For desire is especially aroused by the awareness of ignorance, and consequently a man takes the greatest pleasure in those things which he discovers for himself or learns from the ground up.”

KnowsMenWantKindDoeScienceDesireCausesUnderstandingPleasureSituationWonderKnowledgeEffectsAwarenessIgnoranceParticularAriseIgnorantExceedAstonishmentGreatest PleasuresDesire For Knowledge
Author:Thomas Aquinas
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“[At the end of the story, its main character, Tom] is now a great man of science, and can plan railroads, and steam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth; and knows everything about everything, except why a hen's egg don't turn into a crocodile, and two or three other little things that no one will know till the coming of the Cocqcigrues.”

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Book:The Water-babies a Fairy Tale for a Land-baby by the Rev. Charles Kingsley
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“[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also.”

ThinkingHumansFormSciencePresidentNaturalKnowledgeHistoryHabitSafeDaily LifeHuman HistoryNaturalistUnitingNatural HistoryTheodoreTechnical KnowledgeWild Life
Author:John Burroughs
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“[The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardised citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.”

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Author:H. L. Mencken
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“The resolution of revolutions is selection by conflict within the scientific community of the fittest way to practice future science. The net result of a sequence of such revolutionary selections, separated by periods of normal research, is the wonderfully adapted set of instruments we call modern scientific knowledge.”

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Book:The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition
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“If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then , my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.”

IfsWorldHas BeensStillsRealMomentsPastDifficultMemoriesBehindsWonderKnowledgeLearningMeditationAwarenessHabitExpectationsManagementGood ThingsBuddhistReal WorldExpectingHere And NowHappy MemoriesIf ThenActually Living
Book:The Wisdom of Insecurity
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“Gradually, ... the aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature. It is because science gives us the power of manipulating nature that it has more social importance than art. Science as the pursuit of truth is the equal, but not the superior, of art. Science as a technique, though it may have little intrinsic value, has a practical importance to which art cannot aspire.”

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Book:The Scientific Outlook
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“I feel that, in a sense, the writer knows nothing any longer. He has no moral stance. He offers the reader the contents of his own head, a set of options and imaginative alternatives. His role is that of a scientist, whether on safari or in his laboratory, faced with an unknown terrain or subject. All he can do is to devise various hypotheses and test them against the facts.”

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Author:J. G. Ballard
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“We often observe in lawyers, who as Quicquid agunt homines is the matter of law suits, are sometimes obliged to pick up a temporary knowledge of an art or science, of which they understood nothing till their brief was delivered, and appear to be much masters of it.”

ArtSometimesMatterLawScienceUnderstandingKnowledgeMastersPicksUnderstoodLawyerSuitsTemporaryObliged
Book:The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., comprehending an account of his studies, and numerous works, in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published; the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished
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