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Knowledge Quotes

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Knowledge Quotes

“The great mass of people judge well of things, for they are in natural ignorance, which is man's true state.”

People Men Wells States Natural Knowledge Ignorance Judging Mass

Author:Blaise Pascal

“Knowledge has two extremes. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great minds, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same natural ignorance from which they set out; this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself.”

Knows Men Mind Firsts Two Running Natural Knowledge Ignorance Birth Pure Conscious Extremes Self Knowledge Back Again Great Minds Two Extremes

Author:Blaise Pascal

“A … difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare.”

“Some men covet knowledge out of a natural curiosity and inquisitive temper; some to entertain the mind with variety and delight; some for ornament and reputation; some for victory and contention; many for lucre and a livelihood; and but few for employing the Divine gift of reason to the use and benefit of mankind.”

Source: The Advancement of Learning

“In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man.”

Men Humans Philosophy Character Use Humanity Three Natural Differences Knowledge Divine All Things Arise Contemplation Inquiry Penetrate Power Of God Natural Philosophy

Book:Philosophical works

Source: Philosophical works

“Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.”

Government Natural Education Liberty Knowledge Involved Authority Absolutes Rejection Favourite Knowledge Education Education And Knowledge Authority Figures Authority And Power

Book:T. H. Huxley on Education

Source: T. H. Huxley on Education

“The basic economic resource - the means of production - is no longer capital, nor natural resources, nor labor. It is and will be knowledge.”

Mean Natural Knowledge Learning Economic Resources Labor Productions Natural Resources Sharing Knowledge Knowledge And Information Information Knowledge Economic Resources

Author:Peter Drucker

“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.”

“The notion that "applied" knowledge is somehow less worthy than "pure" knowledge, was natural to a society in which all useful work was performed by slaves and serfs, and in which industry was controlled by the models set by custom rather than by intelligence. Science, or the highest knowing, was then identified with pure theorizing, apart from all application in the uses of life; and knowledge relating to useful arts suffered the stigma attaching to the classes who engaged in them.”

Art Use Natural Class Knowledge Knowing Industry Pure Highest Models Slave Notion Worthy Engaged Customs Controlled Application Stigma Serfs

Book:The Middle Works, 1899-1924

Source: The Middle Works, 1899-1924

“Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity.”

Natural Education Knowledge Learning Serious Healthy Garden Experience Satisfaction Educational Contemplation Labour Gardening Longevity Tranquility

Book:Silva: or, a discourse of forest-trees, and the propagation of timber in His Majesty's dominions

Source: Silva: or, a discourse of forest-trees, and the propagation of timber in His Majesty's dominions

“Human behaviour reveals uniformities which constitute natural laws. If these uniformities did not exist, then there would be neither social science nor political economy, and even the study of history would largely be useless. In effect, if the future actions of men having nothing in common with their past actions, our knowledge of them, although possibly satisfying our curiosity by way of an interesting story, would be entirely useless to us as a guide in life.”

“... in going over the history of all the inventions for which history could be obtained it became more and more clear that in addition to training and in addition to extensive knowledge, a natural quality of mind was also necessary.”

Mind Science Natural Quality Knowledge History Clear Training Invention

Author:Reginald Fessenden

“But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men.”

Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes

“I also maintain that clear knowledge of natural science must be acquired, in the first instance, through mastery of medicine alone.”

Knows Firsts Science Natural Knowledge Clear Medicine Instance Mastery Natural Science

Author:Hippocrates

“I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to conviction, in common I believe with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin; or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one into another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.”

Believe Long Made Matter Action Form Science Belief Force I Believe Natural Common Opinion Knowledge Lovers Various Conviction Related Dependent Manifest

Book:The Life and Letters of Faraday

Source: The Life and Letters of Faraday

“I trust and believe that the time spent in this voyage ... will produce its full worth in Natural History; and it appears to me the doing what little we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue.”

Knows Believe Littles Science Natural Knowledge Objects Produce Increase Pursue Respectable Voyages Likelihood Time Spent Natural History Trust And Believe

Book:Charles Darwin: His Life in an Autobiographical Chapter and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters

Source: Charles Darwin: His Life in an Autobiographical Chapter and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters

“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.”

“The growth of our knowledge is the result of a process closely resembling what Darwin called 'natural selection'; that is, the natural selection of hypotheses: our knowledge consists, at every moment, of those hypotheses which have shown their (comparative) fitness by surviving so far in their struggle for existence, a competitive struggle which eliminates those hypotheses which are unfit.”

Moments Science Process Growth Natural Results Existence Knowledge Struggle Hypothesis Selection Surviving Natural Selection Struggle For Existence

Author:Karl Popper

“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.”

Source: The age of reason

“[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also.”

Thinking Humans Form Science President Natural Knowledge History Habit Safe Daily Life Human History Naturalist Uniting Natural History Theodore Technical Knowledge Wild Life

Author:John Burroughs

“In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection -quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology.”

Believe Facts Natural Answers Knowledge Magic Evolution Educated Plus Formulas Relevant Irrelevant Selection Natural Selection Creationism Mutation Tautology

Author:Arthur Koestler

“Natural knowledge has not forgone emotion. It has simply taken for itself new ground of emotion, under impulsion from and in sacrifice to that one of its 'values', Truth.”

Science Values Natural Emotion Knowledge Taken Sacrifice Emotional

Author:Charles Scott Sherrington

“Without an acquaintance with chemistry, the statesman must remain a stranger to the true vital interests of the state, to the means of its organic development and improvement; ... The highest economic or material interests of a country, the increased and more profitable production of food for man and animals, ... are most closely linked with the advancement and diffusion of the natural sciences, especially of chemistry.”

Source: Familiar Letters on Chemistry, in its relation to Physiology, Dietetics, Agriculture, Commerce and Political Economy: Edited by John Blyth

“The study of taxonomy in its broadest sense is probably the oldest branch of biology or natural history as well as the basis for all the other branches, since the first step in obtaining any knowledge of things about us is to discriminate between them and to learn to recognize them.”

Firsts Wells Science Natural Steps Knowledge Study Bases Branches Biology First Steps Obtaining Natural History Taxonomy

Author:Richard E. Blackwelder

“As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space.”

Thinking Knows Science Natural Space Brain Knowledge Relation Followers Time And Space Gross Natural Science Correlation

Author:Charles Scott Sherrington

“If physicists could not quote in the text, they would not feel that much was lost with respect to advancement of knowledge of the natural world. If historians could not quote, they would deem it a disastrous impediment to the communication of knowledge about the past. A luxury for physicists, quotation is a necessity for historians, indispensable to historiography.”

Ifs World Feels Past Science Lost Natural Knowledge Communication Luxury Historian Quotations Indispensable Physicist Advancement Natural World Impediments Historiography

Author:J. H. Hexter

“In the natural sciences, and particularly in chemistry, generalities must come after the detailed knowledge of each fact and not before it.”

Knows Facts Science Natural Knowledge Chemistry Natural Science Generalities

Author:Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

“Knowledge of Nature is an account at bank, where each dividend is added to the principal and the interest is ever compounded; and hence it is that human progress, founded on natural knowledge, advances with ever increasing speed.”

Knows Humans Science Interest Natural Knowledge Progress Accounts Speed Principal Dividends Human Progress

Book:Presidential Address by Grove Karl Gilbert: With Constitution and Standing Rules, Abstracts of Minutes and Lists of Officers and Members, 1895

Source: Presidential Address by Grove Karl Gilbert: With Constitution and Standing Rules, Abstracts of Minutes and Lists of Officers and Members, 1895

“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.”

“...monetary exchanges have interesting things in common; Gresham's law, if true, says what one of these interesting things is. But what is interesting about monetary exchanges is surely not their commonalities under physical description. A natural kind like a monetary exchange could turn out to be co-extensive with a physical natural kind; but if it did, that would be an accident on a cosmic scale.”

Ifs Mind Kind Would Be Law Turns Natural Interesting Common Knowledge Accidents Scales Description Cosmic Interesting Things Monetary Commonality

Author:Jerry Fodor

“...there are special sciences not because of the nature of our epistemic relation to the world, but because of the way the world is put together: not all natural kinds (not all the classes of things and events about which there are important, counterfactual supporting generalizations to make) are, or correspond to, physical natural kinds.”

World Way Mind Kind Important Together Natural Class Knowledge Special Events Relation Generalization

Author:Jerry Fodor

“When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.”

Ifs Turns Natural Knowledge Study Creation Scientist Miracle Psychedelic Mystic Natural Science

Author:Albert Hofmann

“We are entitled to personal revelation, especially when it concerns our own or our children's lives and what has been foreordained for them. This is true whether our children number one or ten, and whether the Lord sends them to us through natural means or adoption. This is a glorious knowledge.”

Life Mean Children Has Beens Natural Numbers Lord Knowledge Ten Concern Our Children Glorious Revelations Adoption Entitled Personal Revelation

Author:Richard M. Eyre

“Whoever will cultivate their own mind will find full employment. Every virtue does not only require great care in the planting, but as much daily solicitude in cherishing as exotic fruits and flowers; the vices and passions (which I am afraid are the natural product of the soil) demand perpetual weeding. Add to this the search after knowledge. . . and the longest life is too short.”

Source: The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu