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Knowledge Quotes

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Knowledge Quotes

“I am not fully informed of the practices at Harvard, but there is one from which we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly every college and academy in the United States. That is, the holding the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocations to which they are destined. We shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualification only, and sufficient age.”

Source: Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts

“Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.”

Knowledge Particular Strive Suspects Intensity Strife

Book:The Blue Octavo Notebooks

Source: The Blue Octavo Notebooks

“Liberalism regards all absolutes with profound skepticism, including both moral imperatives and final solutions... Insistence upon any particular solution is the mark of an ideologue.”

“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.”

“Civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone.”

Men May Ends Use Individual Knowledge Society Achieve Particular Civilization Members Profit Pursue Civilized Civilized Society

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“It makes no sense to seek a single best way to represent knowledge-because each particular form of expression also brings its particular limitations. For example, logic-based systems are very precise, but they make it hard to do reasoning with analogies. Similarly, statistical systems are useful for making predictions, but do not serve well to represent the reasons why those predictions are sometimes correct.”

Way Wells Sometimes Hard Reason Form Knowledge Example Particular Expression Logic Best Way Limitation Reason Why Reasoning Precise Predictions Analogies

Author:Marvin Minsky

“The knowable world is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from nowhere in particular.”

Ifs World Views Knowledge Particular Empty Point Of View Incomplete

Author:Richard Shweder

“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.”

Source: 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

“Do you know that the words meditation and medicine come from the same root? Meditation is a kind of medicine; its use is only for the time being. Once you have learned the quality, then you need not do any particular meditation, then the meditation has to spread all over your life. Only when you are meditative twenty-four hours a day then can you attain, then you have attained. Even sleeping is meditation.”

“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.”

Ifs Art Facts Helping Body Law Science Artist Knowledge Particular Concerned Scientist Mere Significant Instance Observation Significance Relative Scientific Knowledge

Author:Bertrand Russell

“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.”

“We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge”

Knows Want Science Universe Next Knowledge Particular Depends Civilization Disposition Crave Enquiry

Author:George Will

“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.”

“At the age of three I began to look around my grandfather's library. My first knowledge of astronomy came from reading and looking at pictures at that time. By the time I was six I remember him buying books for me. ... I think I was eight, he bought me a three-inch telescope on a brass mounting. ... So, as far back as I can remember, I had an early interest in science in general, astronomy in particular.”

“It is the duty of all teachers, and of teachers of mathematics in particular, to expose their students to problems much more than to facts.”

Facts Problem Knowledge Teacher Teaching Students Particular Duty Logic Mathematics Math Math Education Math Teacher Math Problems

Book:Selecta: expository writing

Source: Selecta: expository writing

“In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of all climates, and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class.”

Found Class Knowledge Produce Particular Climate Pursuit Coins Circulation Pursuit Of Knowledge Ferns

Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think

Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think