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Knowledge Quotes

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Knowledge Quotes

“Unintended consequences get to the heart of why you never really understand an adaptive problem until you have solved it. Problems morph and "solutions" often point to deeper problems. In social life, as in nature, we are walking on a trampoline. Every inroad reconfigures the environment we tread on.”

Heart Problem Social Knowledge Learning Environment Walking Solutions Consequence Management Deeper Social Life Adaptive Unintended Consequences Trampolines

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

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

“While the collateral consequences of drugs such as cocaine are indisputably severe, they are not unlike those which flow from the misuse of other, legal, substances.”

Law Science Responsibility Knowledge Drug Consequence Flow Tolerance Substance Severe Cocaine Prohibition Misuse Collateral

Author:Byron White

“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.”

Source: Why History Matters: Life and Thought

“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.”

“That discipline which corrects the eagerness of worldly passions, which fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, which enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes to it matter of enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity than all the provisions which we can make of the goods of fortune.”

“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.”

Ifs Happens Action Next Women Knowledge Morning Laughing Drink Bed Consequence Stones Dare Doomed Ruined Foresight

Author:Margaret Atwood

“Men will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences. Science will go on whether we are pessimistic or optimistic, as I am. More interesting discoveries than we can imagine will be made, and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm.”

Men Made Matter Science Interesting Knowledge Imagine Goes On Discovery Consequence Accounts No Matter What Curiosity Optimistic Enthusiasm Pessimistic

Author:Linus Pauling

“Perhaps we're too embarrassed to change or too frightened of the consequences of showing that we actually care. But why not risk it anyway? Begin today. Carry out a random act of seemingly senseless kindness, with no expectation of reward or punishment, safe in the knowledge that one day, someone somewhere might do the same for you.”

Might Care Today Change Knowledge Kindness Risk One Day Safe Expectations Consequence Rewards Punishment Why Not Frightened Embarrassed Risk It Inspirational Kindness

Author:Princess Diana

“During the last two centuries and a half, physical knowledge has been gradually made to rest upon a basis which it had not before. It has become mathematical. The question now is, not whether this or that hypothesis is better or worse to the pure thought, but whether it accords with observed phenomena in those consequences which can be shown necessarily to follow from it, if it be true”

Ifs Has Beens Made Two Lasts Science Half Knowledge Century Pure Consequence Bases Mathematics Being True Observation Mathematical Hypothesis Accord

Book:A Budget of Paradoxes Reprinted, with the Author's Additions, from the Athenaeum Augustus De Morgan

Source: A Budget of Paradoxes Reprinted, with the Author's Additions, from the Athenaeum Augustus De Morgan

“Geological facts being of an historical nature, all attempts to deduce a complete knowledge of them merely from their still, subsisting consequences, to the exclusion of unexceptionable testimony, must be deemed as absurd as that of deducing the history of ancient Rome solely from the medals or other monuments of antiquity it still exhibits, or the scattered ruins of its empire, to the exclusion of a Livy, a Sallust, or a Tacitus.”

Stills Facts Science Knowledge History Consequence Historical Ancient Absurd Observation Ruins Empires Rome Testimony Medal Monument Exhibits Antiquity Exclusion Geology Ancient Rome

Book:Geological essays

Source: Geological essays

“Geology holds the keys of one of the kingdoms of nature; and it cannot be said that a science which extends our Knowledge, and by consequence our Power, over a third part of nature, holds a low place among intellectual employments.”

Said Science Knowledge Keys Intellectual Lows Consequence Thirds Kingdoms Employment Geology

Book:Vindiciæ Geologicæ: The Connexion of Geology with Religion, Explained in an Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before University of Oxford, May 15, 1819, on the Endowment of Readership in Geology

Source: Vindiciæ Geologicæ: The Connexion of Geology with Religion, Explained in an Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before University of Oxford, May 15, 1819, on the Endowment of Readership in Geology

“The big idea we start with is: "How is the genome interpreted, and how are stable decisions that affect gene expression inherited from one cell to the next?" This is one of the most competitive areas of molecular biology at the moment, and the students are reading papers that in some instances were published this past year. As a consequence, one of the most common answers I have to give to their questions is, "We just don't know."”