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Knowledge Quotes

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Knowledge Quotes

“Explicit knowledge, conventionally delivered like pizza (neat boxes with toppings of concepts, theories, best practices and war stories), is consumed by the brain but not metabolized into action. The learning we call intuition, know-how and common sense gets into the blood stream through osmosis. It is shaped by social context.”

Source: The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems

“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.”

Knows Should Philosophy Science Certain Knowledge Knowing Ignorance Ought Concepts Affair Practicals Certainty Useless Not Knowing Precise Precision Arithmetic Sceptic

Author:Bertrand Russell

“All our thoughts and concepts are called up by sense-experiences and have a meaning only in reference to these sense-experiences. On the other hand, however, they are products of the spontaneous activity of our minds; they are thus in no wise logical consequences of the contents of these sense-experiences. If, therefore, we wish to grasp the essence of a complex of abstract notions we must for the one part investigate the mutual relationships between the concepts and the assertions made about them; for the other, we must investigate how they are related to the experiences.”

“Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense.”

Love Believe Whole Wisdom Might Lying Hope Wish Knowledge Concepts Universal Species Welfare Universal Love Selfish Gene

Author:Richard Dawkins

“The nearer a conception comes towards finality, the nearer does the dynamic relation, out of which this concept has arisen, draw to a close. To know is to lose.”

Knows Doe Change Loses Loss Knowledge Draws Concepts Relation Conception Finality

Book:Fantasia of the Unconscious: Top Novelist Focus

Source: Fantasia of the Unconscious: Top Novelist Focus

“Within the next few years-a decade perhaps-we should be in a position to unlock new knowledge about life and matter so great that wholly new concepts of human life will follow in the wake of this new knowledge.”

Life Should Years Humans Matter Next Knowledge Position Concepts Decades Human Life New Knowledge

Author:David Lilienthal

“All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.”

Humans Ideas Ends Science Knowledge Concepts Intuition Human Knowledge

Author:Immanuel Kant

“I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics.”

“In physics we deal with states of affairs much simpler than those of psychology and yet we again and again learn that our task is not to investigate the essence of things-we do not at all know what this would mean&mash;but to develop those concepts that allow us to speak with each other about the events of nature in a fruitful manner.”

Knows Mean States Science Speak Deals Knowledge Psychology Events Concepts Tasks Essence Affair Simplicity Physics Again And Again

Author:Niels Bohr

“It must be conceded that a theory has an important advantage if its basic concepts and fundamental hypotheses are 'close to experience,' and greater confidence in such a theory is certainly justified. There is less danger of going completely astray, particularly since it takes so much less time and effort to disprove such theories by experience. Yet more and more, as the depth of our knowledge increases, we must give up this advantage in our quest for logical simplicity in the foundations of physical theory.”

Source: Ideas and Opinions

“Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts).”

Source: Immanuel Kant's Critique Of Pure Reason

“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind... The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.”

Thinking Science Understanding Knowledge Concepts Empty Blind Unions Intuition Senses Arise

Book:Critique of pure reason

Source: Critique of pure reason

“The mechanist is intimately convinced that a precise knowledge of the chemical constitution, structure, and properties of the various organelles of a cell will solve biological problems. This will come in a few centuries. For the time being, the biologist has to face such concepts as orienting forces or morphogenetic fields. Owing to the scarcity of chemical data and to the complexity of life, and despite the progresses of biochemistry, the biologist is still threatened with vertigo.”

“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.”

“An amazing thing, the human brain. Capable of understanding incredibly complex and intricate concepts. Yet at times unable to recognize the obvious and simple.”

Humans Wisdom Understanding Simple Decision Brain Knowledge Capable Concepts Complexes Obvious Amazing Things Intricate Human Brain

Book:Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition

Source: Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition

“Throughout all the years and in everything we do, we have focused most of all on the development of human capacity, beginning with our own professional staff, and leveraging their expertise to enrich the Arab community. We have embraced the concept of the 'knowledge worker' and have sought to empower our people and the Arab world's people to dream, to imagine, and to create.”

“To be sure, mathematics can be extended to any branch of knowledge, including economics, provided the concepts are so clearly defined as to permit accurate symbolic representation. That is only another way of saying that in some branches of discourse it is desirable to know what you are talking about.”

Knows Way Talking Knowledge Concepts Economics Mathematics Including Math Defined Mathematical Branches Permit Accurate Representation Discourse Desirable Another Way Symbolic

Book:The World of Mathematics

Source: The World of Mathematics