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Knowledge Quotes

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Knowledge Quotes

“One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.”

KnowsLooksImportantScienceSimpleKnowledgeMovementBuildingPureDiscoveryImportanceAccidentsMarsTelescopesSatellitesHistory Of Science
Book:The reminiscences of an astronomer
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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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“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).”

KnowsMindFirstsTwoScienceKnowledgeKnowingObjectsSourceSpringConceptsCapacityFundamentalsProductionsImpressionReceivingRepresentationSpontaneityReceptivity
Book:Immanuel Kant's Critique Of Pure Reason
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“Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks it own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the common stock than that which it immediately succeeds.”

KnowsRememberScienceInterestCommonKnowledgeProgressGenerationsProduceSucceedDeserveIncreaseAddRateBoundsChecksComparisonRapidsAccumulationCompoundsPredecessorsAccelerateCompound Interest
Author:Charles Babbage
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“Science itself is badly in need of integration and unification. The tendency is more and more the other way ... Only the graduate student, poor beast of burden that he is, can be expected to know a little of each. As the number of physicists increases, each specialty becomes more self-sustaining and self-contained. Such Balkanization carries physics, and indeed, every science further away, from natural philosophy, which, intellectually, is the meaning and goal of science.”

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Author:Isidor Isaac Rabi
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“The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little better, whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable and of divine origin.”

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Book:The age of reason
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“The partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch not in a point; but are like branches of a tree, that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance, before it come to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs.”

KnowsScienceLinesKnowledgeBreakTreeArmsBranchesDimensionsQuantityStemAnglePartitionContinuance
Book:The Advancement of Learning
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“The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning, and when they cannot, it's a sign our Knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and where a mathematical reasoning can be had, it's as great folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you have a Candle standing by you.”

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Author:John Arbuthnot
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“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.”

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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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“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.”

KnowsWayStatesBodyScienceCausesTermKnowledgeSubjectsDiseaseMethodAgentsOrganismsCultivationContagionMicrobes
Book:Scientific Papers; Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology
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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.”

ThinkingKnowsMindPainScienceTimeKnowledgeClearIllusionRangeMeasurement
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.”

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Author:Johannes Kepler
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“Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science.”

KnowsScienceKnowledgeIgnoranceIgnorantMan And Superman
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.”

KnowsMenLittlesTwoEndsCharacterStoriesScienceTurnsThreeKnowledgePlansGunGreat MenEggsLittle ThingsEnginesElectricTomsSteamRailroadsCrocodilesHensMain CharactersTelegraphSteam Engines
Book:The Water-babies a Fairy Tale for a Land-baby by the Rev. Charles Kingsley
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