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Knowledge Quotes

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Knowledge Quotes

“While the dogmatist is harmful, the sceptic is useless ...; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance. Knowledge is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead of saying 'I know this', we ought to say 'I more or less know something more or less like this'. ... Knowledge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision of arithmetic.”

KnowsShouldPhilosophyScienceCertainKnowledgeKnowingIgnoranceOughtConceptsAffairPracticalsCertaintyUselessNot KnowingPrecisePrecisionArithmeticSceptic
Author:Bertrand Russell
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“A knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate...is not the blind superstition or helplessness that waits stupidly for what may happen. Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance.”

IfsMenWorldMayDoeHappensCertainGivenCausesWaitingResultsKnowledgeFateIgnoranceShapesEssentialsBlindPreparedInevitableSuperstitionsBe PreparedHelplessness
Book:My Several Worlds: A Personal Record
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“We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events.”

HumansMadeDifferentProblemActionPastCertainChoicesKnowledgeTeachGenerationsEventsExamplePossibilityCircumstancesDemandConsequenceClimate ChangeDetermineUndoneAnalogiesHuman ActionsFuture EventsPast GenerationsActions Have Consequences
Book:Why History Matters: Life and Thought
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“One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.”

HumansImportantFeelingsNightCertainValuesKnowledgeHeardIgnoranceFlowerUnderstoodGardenDirectStrikesMoodDramaticPoeticLeafsMeadowsProdigiesImbecilityDazed
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“Certain souls seem hard because they are capable of strong feelings, and they sometimes go to rather extreme lengths; their apparent unconcern and cruelty are but ways, known only to themselves, of feeling more strongly than others.”

WaySoulSometimesHardFeelingsWisdomSeemsCertainTimeStrongChangeAbilityKnownKnowledgeStrengthCapableExtremesCrueltyLengthStrong Feeling
Book:The 120 days of Sodom and other writings
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“Knowledge signifies things known. Where there are no things known, there is no knowledge. Where there are no things to be known, there can be no knowledge. We have observed that every science, that is, every branch of knowledge, is compounded of certain facts, of which our sensations furnish the evidence. Where no such evidence is supplied, we are without data; we are without first premises; and when, without these, we attempt to build up a science, we do as those who raise edifices without foundations. And what do such builders construct? Castles in the air.”

FirstsFactsScienceCertainReligionKnownKnowledgeAirEvidenceRaisesFoundationDataBranchesSensationsConstructsCastlesPremisesBuilderEdificeCastles In The Air
Author:Frances Wright
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“Men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, and are the victims at all times of the nearest object. There is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. Our experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood.”

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Book:The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Yet still, there are those special secret moments in our lives, when we smile unexpectedly-when all our forces are resolved. A woman can often see these moments in us, better than a man, better than we ourselves, even. When we know these moments, when we smile, when we are not on guard at all-these are the moments when our most important forces show themselves; whatever it is you are doing at such a moment, hold on to it, repeat it-for that certain smile is the best knowledge that we ever have of what our hidden forces are, and where they lie, and how they can be loosed.”

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Book:The Timeless Way of Building
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“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”

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Book:Ideas and Opinions
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“You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin , or even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.”

KnowsHelpingCertainNatureKnowledgeToo MuchTreeIgnoranceFlowerTravelBirdEnjoymentPreciseMarginsCredulityKnowledge EducationEducation And KnowledgeVaguenessKnowledge LearningFlowering Trees
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Walt Whitman (Illustrated)
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“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.”

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Author:Jacob Bronowski
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“Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.”

StatesWholeEarthDesireCertainNaturalKnowledgeConditionsIgnoranceUltimateAbsolutesInfiniteFoundationExtremesContraryReachingCracksTowersIncapableAbyssInclinationGroundworkCertain Knowledge
Author:Blaise Pascal
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“In physiology, as in all other sciences, no discovery is useless, no curiosity misplaced or too ambitious, and we may be certain that every advance achieved in the quest of pure knowledge will sooner or later play its part in the service of man.”

MenMayPlayScienceCertainKnowledgePureAmbitionDiscoveryAccountsCuriosityUselessAmbitiousQuestsSooner Or LaterPhysiologyMisplaced
Book:Starling on the Heart: Facsimile Reprints, Including the Linacre Lecture on the Law of the Heart
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“For there is a great difference in delivery of the mathematics , which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy , which is the most immersed. And howsoever contention hath been moved , touching a uniformity of method in multiformity of matter, yet we see how that opinion, besides the weakness of it, hath been of ill desert towards learning, as that which taketh the way to reduce learning to certain empty and barren generalities; being but the very husks and shells of sciences, all the kernel being forced out and expulsed with the torture and press of the method.”

WayMatterScienceCertainDifferencesOpinionKnowledgeLearningSubjectsPolicyDiversityWeaknessEmptyMathematicsMethodPressesIllDesertTortureAbstractShellsDeliveryBarrenGeneralitiesKernel
Author:Francis Bacon
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“Things and men have always a certain sense, a certain side by which they must be got hold of if one wants to obtain a solid grasp and a perfect command.”

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Book:The Complete Novels of Joseph Conrad - All 20 Works in One Premium Edition: Including Unforgettable Titles like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and Many More (With Author’s Letters, Memoirs and Critical Essays)
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“I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a 'body of knowledge,' but rather as a system of hypotheses; that is to say, as a system of guesses or anticipations which in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know they are 'true' or 'more or less certain' or even 'probable.'”

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Author:Karl Popper
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“Modern physics has changed nothing in the great classical disciplines of, for instance, mechanics, optics, and heat. Only the conception of hitherto unexplored regions, formed prematurely from a knowledge of only certain parts of the world, has undergone a decisive transformation. This conception, however, is always decisive for the future course of research.”

WorldScienceCertainCoursesKnowledgeModernChangedDisciplineResearchTransformationPhysicsInstanceHeatRegionsConceptionMechanicUnexploredOpticsModern Physics
Book:Philosophical problems of quantum physics
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“Without any doubt, the regularity which astronomy shows us in the movements of the comets takes place in all phenomena. The trajectory of a simple molecule of air or vapour is regulated in a manner as certain as that of the planetary orbits; the only difference between them is that which is contributed by our ignorance. Probability is relative in part to this ignorance, and in part to our knowledge.”

ShowsScienceCertainDifferencesSimpleKnowledgeDoubtAirMovementIgnorancePlantAstronomyIgnorantRelativeProbabilityMoleculesOrbitTrajectoryRegularityCometsVapour
Book:Pierre-Simon Laplace Philosophical Essay on Probabilities: Translated from the fifth French edition of 1825 With Notes by the Translator
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“What the founders of modern science ... had to do, was not criticize and to combat certain faulty theories, and to correct or to replace them by better ones. They had to do something quite different. They had to destroy one world and replace it by another. They had to reshape the framework of our intellect itself, to restate and to reform its concepts, to evolve a new approach to Being, a new concept of knowledge, and a new concept of science - and even to replace a pretty natural approach, that of common sense, by another which is not natural at all.”

KnowsWorldDifferentScienceCertainNaturalCommonKnowledgeModernTheoryApproachConceptsIntellectCommon SenseReformEvolveCriticizeCombatFoundersFrameworkModern ScienceNew Approach
Author:Alexandre Koyre
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“For a person to build a rich and rewarding life for himself, there are certain qualities and bits of knowledge that he needs to acquire. But there are also things — harmful attitudes, superstitions, emotions — that he needs to chip away. A person needs to chip away everything that doesn't look like the person he or she most wants to become.”

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Author:Earl Nightingale
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“The use of knowledge in our sex (beside the amusement of solitude) is to moderate the passions and learn to be contented with a small expense, which are the certain effects of a studious life and, it may be, preferable even to that fame which men have engrossed to themselves and will not suffer us to share.”

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Book:The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Including Her Correspondence, Poems, and Essays, Form Her Genuine Papers
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