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Knowledge Quotes

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Knowledge Quotes

“Hitherto the principle of causality was universally accepted as an indispensable postulate of scientific research, but now we are told by some physicists that it must be thrown overboard. The fact that such an extraordinary opinion should be expressed in responsible scientific quarters is widely taken to be significant of the all-round unreliability of human knowledge. This indeed is a very serious situation.”

ShouldHumansFactsScienceResponsibilitySituationOpinionPrinciplesKnowledgeTakenAcceptanceSeriousResearchResponsibleExtraordinaryRoundsAcceptedSignificantThrownQuartersIndispensablePhysicistScientific ResearchHuman KnowledgeCausalityOverboardUnreliability
Book:The new science: 3 complete works: Where is science going? The universe in the light of modern physics; The philosophy of physics
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“History is valuable, to begin with, because it is true; and this, though not the whole of its value, is the foundation and condition of all the rest. That all knowledge, as such, is in some degree good, would appear to be at least probable; and the knowledge of every historical fact possesses this element of goodness, even if it posses no other.”

IfsWholeFactsValuesKnowledgeConditionsGoodnessDegreesElementsFoundationHistoricalValuablePosseHistorical Facts
Book:Contemplation and Action, 1902-14
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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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“Everywhere we are told that our human resources are all to be used, that our civilization itself means the uses of everything it has - the inventions, the histories, every scrap of fact. But there is one kind of knowledge - infinitely precious, time-resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.”

WayHumansKindMayMeanFactsUseUsedPoetryKnowledgeGenerationsPoetCivilizationResourcesInventionMonumentUsefulnessHuman ResourcesScrapPrecious Time
Author:Muriel Rukeyser
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“It is easy to see, though it scarcely needs to be pointed out, since it is involved in the fact that Reason is set aside, that faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either a knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and historical as indifferent, or it is pure historical knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical.”

NeedsReasonFactsFormFaithEasyKnowledgeObjectsInvolvedPureEternalHistoricalIndifferentAbsurdityHistorical Knowledge
Author:Soren Kierkegaard
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“Of course, you don't have to have a degree to be rich. You just have to have ideas. Maybe having a degree sets you back, for it stuffs you into tick-tock [the daily grind of work], and perhaps that stifles your creative mind. But the fact is that many millionaires have few educational qualifications of any kind at all. However, they still have knowledge. The difference is, they have knowledge they can sell, and others have the "common knowledge" of tick-tock, which isn't worth as much, if anything at all.”

IfsMindKindStillsIdeasFactsCoursesStuffDifferencesCommonKnowledgeCreativeRichDegreesSellsEducationalMillionaireGrindQualificationsTickCreative MindCommon KnowledgeDaily GrindTockTick Tock
Author:Stuart Wilde
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“The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.”

ThinkingWayImportantFactsScienceKnowledgeLearningDiscoveryScientistManagementImportant ThingsPhysicsDiscoveringNew WaysWay Of ThinkingQuantum PhysicsScience And TechnologyScientific ResearchNatural ScienceMath And ScienceScientific DiscoveryQuantum TheoryScientific TheoryNew DiscoveriesGreat ScienceScientific FactsScience PhysicsScience TechnologyScience ResearchDiscovery In ScienceNew Ways Of ThinkingScience LifeScience TeacherInspirational ScienceImportance Of Science
Author:William Lawrence Bragg
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“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.”

LifeInspirationalGivingChildrenLittlesFactsWisdomMotivationalNatureEducationKnowledgeCreativityLearningHumilityGiving UpInnovationPreparedNotionCuriosityBe PreparedAbyssPreconceived NotionsInspirational Learning
Book:The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley
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“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

KnowsMatterFactsTruthSpiritualLife IsSpiritualityDifficultAcceptingKnowledgeLearningEncouragementManagementAcceptedRoad Less TraveledLife Is DifficultRoad Less Travelled
Book:The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
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“When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life. Have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around that you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.”

PeopleWorldWayTryingLittlesMadeFactsLife IsFunGrowsSimpleKnowledgeGrowing UpLearningToo MuchNiceInfluenceWallHaving FunSmarterLive Your LifeFamily LifeLittle MoneyBashJust Live Your LifeNice Family
Author:Steve Jobs
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“I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people. I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false. But this knowledge does not outweigh the fact that my class, the working class, is exploited, driven, fought back with the weapon of starvation, with guns and with venal courts whenever they strike for conditions more human, more civilized for their children, and for their children's children.”

PeopleHumansChildrenDoePlayFactsLeaderClassKnowledgeHistoryConditionsWeaponsGunBlindSellsCourtStrikesDrivenCivilizedBetrayWorking ClassStarvationShortcomings
Author:Mother Jones
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“Of true knowledge at any time, a good part is merely convenient, necessary indeed to the worker, but not to an understanding of his subject: One can judge a building without knowing where to buy the bricks; one can understand a violin sonata without knowing how to score for the instrument. The work may in fact be better understood without a knowledge of the details of its manufacture, of attention to these tends to distract from meaning and effect.”

MayFactsUnderstandingAttentionKnowledgeKnowingSubjectsEffectsBuildingJudgingUnderstoodInstrumentsWorkersDetailsScoreBricksConvenientViolinTrue KnowledgeSonatas
Author:Jacques Barzun
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“Experts kill me. Economic experts, that is. Corporations, foundations, publications and governments pay them by the bucketful, and they fill buckets with forecasts that change more frequently than white-collar, workers do shirts. What Lies Ahead is the usual title. What Lies would often be more appropriate. If women's hemlines changed as rapidly as an economist's forecasts, the fashion people and the textile industry would be more profitable than any other. In fact, if all the country's economists were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion.”

PeopleIfsStillsEndsCountryFactsGovernmentWould BeLyingWhitePayKnowledgeEconomicFashionChangedIndustryFoundationWorkersConclusionTitlesCorporationsShirtsExpertsAppropriateUsualEconomistKill MeProfitablePublicationCollarsBucketsOften IsForecastsWhite CollarTextiles
Author:Malcolm Forbes
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“Any classification according to a singular identity polarizes people in a particular way, but if we take note of the fact that we have many different identities - related not just to religion but also to language, occupation and business, politics, class and poverty, and many others - we can see that the polarization of one can be resisted by a fuller picture. So knowledge and understanding are extremely important to fight against singular polarization.”

PeopleIfsWayImportantDifferentFactsFightingLanguageUnderstandingClassPovertyKnowledgeIdentityParticularDiversityNotesRelatedOccupationBrotherhoodUnity In DiversityClassificationPolarizationKnowledge And Understanding
Author:Amartya Sen
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“I really see no harm which can come of giving our children a little knowledge of physiology. ... The instruction must be real, based upon observation, eked out by good explanatory diagrams and models, and conveyed by a teacher whose own knowledge has been acquired by a study of the facts; and not the mere catechismal parrot-work which too often usurps the place of elementary teaching.”

GivingChildrenLittlesHas BeensRealFactsScienceEducationKnowledgeStudyTeacherTeachingModelsOur ChildrenMereHarmObservationInstructionBeing RealParrotsPhysiologyDiagramsLittle Knowledge
Book:Science and Culture: And Other Essays
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“We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The Man of Science, the Chemist and Mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the Anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure; and where he has no pleasure he has no knowledge.”

KnowsMenFeelsMayHas BeensFactsPainSciencePleasurePrinciplesKnowledgeStruggleObjectsParticularHe ManBuiltDifficultyPainfulConnectedContemplationDisgustingMathematicianChemist
Book:Lyrical Ballads and other Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth (Including Their Thoughts On Poetry Principles and Secrets): Collections of Poetry which marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature, including poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Dungeon, The Nightingale, Dejection: An Ode
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“In less than eight years "The Origin of Species" has produced conviction in the minds of a majority of the most eminent living men of science. New facts, new problems, new difficulties as they arise are accepted, solved, or removed by this theory; and its principles are illustrated by the progress and conclusions of every well established branch of human knowledge.”

MenYearsMindHumansWellsFactsProblemSciencePrinciplesKnowledgeProgressAcceptanceTheorySolutionsDifficultyMajoritySpeciesConvictionEightAcceptedAriseConclusionBranchesHuman KnowledgeOrigin Of Species
Book:Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection: A Series of Essays
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“In order that the facts obtained by observation and experiment may be capable of being used in furtherance of our exact and solid knowledge, they must be apprehended and analysed according to some Conceptions which, applied for this purpose, give distinct and definite results, such as can be steadily taken hold of and reasoned from.”

GivingMayReasonFactsScienceUsedPurposeOrderResultsKnowledgeTakenCapableExperimentsObservationConceptionDefinite
Book:Novum Organon Renovatum
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“The significance of a fact is relative to [the general body of scientific] knowledge. To say that a fact is significant in science, is to say that it helps to establish or refute some general law; for science, though it starts from observation of the particular, is not concerned essentially with the particular, but with the general. A fact, in science, is not a mere fact, but an instance. In this the scientist differs from the artist, who, if he deigns to notice facts at all, is likely to notice them in all their particularity.”

IfsArtFactsHelpingBodyLawScienceArtistKnowledgeParticularConcernedScientistMereSignificantInstanceObservationSignificanceRelativeScientific Knowledge
Author:Bertrand Russell
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“By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something about everything; he knew a great deal about everything.”

KnowsPhilosophyWholeFactsScienceDealsKnowledgeFourFieldsCuriosityProfessionTheologyCoveredFenceAbsolutely NothingBiologistHuxleyExact Sciences
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“Necessity is not the mother of invention. Knowledge and experiment are its parents. It sometimes happens that successful search is made for unknown materials to fill well-recognized and predetermined requirements. It more often happens that the acquirement of knowledge of the previously unknown properties of a material suggests its trial for some new use. These facts strongly indicate the value of knowledge of properties of materials and indicate a way for research.”

WayWellsMadeSometimesFactsUseHappensSuccessScienceMotherValuesParentKnowledgeSuccessfulMaterialsResearchPropertyTrialsExperimentsInventionRequirementsAcquisitionPredetermined
Author:Willis R. Whitney
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“Now, in the development of our knowledge of the workings of Nature out of the tremendously complex assemblage of phenomena presented to the scientific inquirer, mathematics plays in some respects a very limited, in others a very important part. As regards the limitations, it is merely necessary to refer to the sciences connected with living matter, and to the ologies generally, to see that the facts and their connections are too indistinctly known to render mathematical analysis practicable, to say nothing of the complexity.”

ImportantMatterPlayFactsScienceNatureKnownKnowledgeDevelopmentConnectionsRegardMathematicsComplexesConnectedMathematicalLimitationAnalysisComplexityAssemblageInquirersMathematical Analysis
Author:Oliver Heaviside
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“One and all We lend an ear-nay, Science takes thereto- Encourages the meanest who has racked Nature until he gains from her some fact, To state what truth is from his point of view, Mere pin-point though it be: since many such Conduce to make a whole, she bids our friend Come forward unabashed and haply lend His little life-experience to our much Of modern knowledge.”

LittlesStatesWholeFactsScienceViewsKnowledgeModernTruth IsResearchGainsEarsMerePoint Of ViewLife ExperiencePins
Book:The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, La Saisiaz, Etc.
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“Only to often on meeting scientific men, even those of genuine distiction, one finds that they are dull fellows and very stupid. They know one thing to excess; they know nothing else. Pursuing facts too doggedly and unimaginatively, they miss all the charming things that are not facts. ... Too much learning, like too little learning, is an unpleasant and dangerous thing.”

KnowsMenLittlesFactsScienceKnowledgeToo MuchOne ThingDangerousMissingStupidScientistFellowsMeetingsGenuineDullExcessCharmingDangerous ThingsVery Stupid
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.”

FactsYoungScienceViewsKnowledgeTrainingRegardPoint Of ViewTreatedInstructionExaminationLivelihoodGatewaysUtilitarian
Book:The basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959
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“The purpose of science is to develop, without prejudice or preconception of any kind, a knowledge of the facts, the laws, and the processes of nature. The even more important task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind.”

KindImportantFactsHandsLawSciencePurposeProcessKnowledgeMankindConscienceIdealsTasksAccountsPrejudiceAspirationPreconceptions
Book:The electron, its isolation and measurement ant the determination of some of its properties
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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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