Knowledge famous quotes
03-24-2025
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The truth and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.
-- A. A. Gill -
It is an anomaly that information, the one thing most necessary to our survival as choosers of our own way, should be a commodity subject to the same merchandising rules as chewing gum.
-- A. J. Liebling -
Paraphrased: Among the degrees of the universal Manifestation, each sentient creature typically experiences an illusory sense of autonomy. At the same time, with or without the creature's awareness, the creature subsists eternally as an "immutable prototype" in the divine Knowledge.
-- Abdelkader El Djezairi -
There are men that teach best by not teaching at all.
-- Abraham Flexner -
Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.
-- Agnes Repplier -
The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.
-- Agnes Repplier -
Even more exasperating than the guy who thinks he knows it all is the one who really does.
-- Al Bernstein -
Doubt is not below knowledge, but above it.
-- Alain-Rene Lesage -
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
-- Albert Camus -
The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
-- Albert Camus -
Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
-- Albert Camus -
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
-- Albert Einstein -
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.
-- Albert Einstein -
Any fool can know. The point is to understand.
-- Albert Einstein -
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.
-- Albert Einstein -
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
-- Albert Einstein -
One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
-- Albert Einstein -
We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never know.
-- Albert Einstein -
The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap
-- Albert Einstein -
When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.
-- Albert Hofmann -
It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.
-- Albert Pike -
Knowledge is a sacred cow, and my problem will be how we can milk her while keeping clear of her horns.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -
I called it ignose, not knowing which carbohydrate it was. This name was turned down by my editor. 'God-nose' was not more successful, so in the end 'hexuronic acid' was agreed upon. To-day the substance is called 'ascorbic acid' and I will use this name.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -
If I go out into nature, into the unknown, to the fringes of knowledge, everything seems mixed up and contradictory, illogical, and incoherent. This is what research does; it smooths out contradictions and makes things simple, logical, and coherent.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -
Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.
-- Aldous Huxley -
If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.
-- Aldous Huxley -
... the greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Knowledge is porportionate to being... You know in virtue of what you are.
-- Aldous Huxley -
It is disgraceful to live as a stranger in one's country, and be an alien in any matter that affects our welfare.
-- Aldus Manutius -
Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.
-- Alexander Pope -
Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound, Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.
-- Alexander Pope -
In vain sedate reflections we would make When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.
-- Alexander Pope -
That virtue only makes our bliss below, And all our knowledge is ourselves to know.
-- Alexander Pope -
I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.
-- Alexander the Great -
What the founders of modern science, among them Galileo, had to do, was not to 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 to 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, 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.
-- Alexandre Koyre -
Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not.
-- Alfred Korzybski -
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
In vertebrate paleontology, increasing knowledge leads to triumphant loss of clarity.
-- Alfred Romer -
Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.
-- Alvin Toffler -
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.
-- Amartya Sen -
Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Were I asked to define it, I should reply that archeology is that science which enables us to register and classify our knowledge of the sum of man's achievement in those arts and handicrafts whereby he has, in time past, signalized his passage from barbarism to civilization.
-- Amelia B. Edwards -
If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.
-- Anais Nin -
To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us.
-- Anatol Rapoport -
It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.
-- Anatole France -
I think it's a good thing that there are bloggers out there watching very closely and holding people accountable. Everyone in the news should be able to hold up to that kind of scrutiny. I'm for as much transparency in the newsgathering process as possible.
-- Anderson Cooper -
I'm not trying to be something that I'm not. I'm just trying to be myself and talk about what I know, and admit what I don't know.
-- Anderson Cooper -
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
-- Andre Gide -
Either one or the other [analysis or synthesis] may be direct or indirect. The direct procedure is when the point of departure is known-direct synthesis in the elements of geometry. By combining at random simple truths with each other, more complicated ones are deduced from them. This is the method of discovery, the special method of inventions, contrary to popular opinion.
-- Andre-Marie Ampere -
Wisdom is not about what you know, but how you know it. If knowledge is a measure of the grasp an individual has of a given subject, wisdom is a measure of his grip. Does he hold his ideas lightly or loosely? Will he let go when they show signs of wear or inappropriateness?
-- Andrew Hargadon -
There's a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: Where was I before I was born. In the beginning was what? Perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it.
-- Angela Carter -
many things I knew, I have forgotten; many things I thought I knew, I find I know nothing about; some things I know, I have found not worth knowing; and some things I would give - O what would one not give to know? are beyond the reach of human ken.
-- Anna Letitia Barbauld -
Now peculiar scraps of knowledge were stuck to him like lint from all his jobs.
-- Anne Tyler -
Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
-- Anton Chekhov -
The Fox knows many things-the hedgehog one big one.
-- Archilochus -
Intuition is the source of scientific knowledge.
-- Aristotle -
At first he who invented any art that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to its recreation, the inventors of the latter were always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility.
-- Aristotle -
The most dangerous silence is noise; noise keeps us from hearing what we need to hear or from speaking what we need to speak.
-- Armin Wiebe -
The only thing to know is how to use your neurosis.
-- Arthur Adamov -
But science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked the development of modern civilisation.
-- Arthur Balfour -
It is vital to remember that information - in the sense of raw data - is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.
-- Arthur C. Clarke -
I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle -
It is not that I think or believe, but that I know.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle -
If the fresh facts come to our knowledge all fit themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually become a solution. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle -
The first thing the reasonable man must do is to be content with a very little knowledge and a very great deal of ignorance. The second thing he must do is to make the utmost possible use of the knowledge he has and not waste his energy crying for the moon. The third thing he must do is try and see clearly where his knowledge ends and his ignorance begins.
-- Arthur David Ritchie -
Unless the structure of the nucleus has a surprise in store for us, the conclusion seems plain-there is nothing in the whole system if laws of physics that cannot be deduced unambiguously from epistemological considerations. An intelligence, unacquainted with our universe, but acquainted with the system of thought by which the human mind interprets to itself the contents of its sensory experience, and should be able to attain all the knowledge of physics that we have attained by experiment.
-- Arthur Eddington -
There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list.
-- Arthur Eddington -
Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself.
-- Arthur Eddington -
Something unknown is doing we don't know what-that is what our theory amounts to.
-- Arthur Eddington -
He who knows what he is told must know a lot of things that are not so.
-- Arthur Guiterman -
Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether.
-- Arthur Helps -
If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.
-- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. -
Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.
-- Arthur Rimbaud -
We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
We like to learn all we need from earlier generations, but we have to find out for ourselves what we need; nobody else can do that for us.
-- Asger Jorn -
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.
-- Audre Lorde -
The question whether atoms exist or not... belongs rather to metaphysics. In chemistry we have only to decide whether the assumption of atoms is an hypothesis adapted to the explanation of chemical phenomena... whether a further development of the atomic hypothesis promises to advance our knowledge of the mechanism of chemical phenomena... I rather expect that we shall some day find, for what we now call atoms, a mathematico-mechanical explanation, which will render an account of atomic weight, of atomicity, and of numerous other properties of the so-called atoms.
-- August Kekule -
The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions-each branch of our knowledge-passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious: the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.
-- Auguste Comte -
In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws-that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts.
-- Auguste Comte -
Is then thy knowledge of no value, unless another know that thou possessest that knowledge?
-- Aulus Persius Flaccus -
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
-- Baltasar Gracian -
Knowledge and courage take turns at greatness.
-- Baltasar Gracian -
Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.
-- Baruch Spinoza -
Let no Body be afrighted, because so many things are to be learnt, when the learning of them will be so pleasant; how profitable I need not tell you.
-- Bathsua Makin -
Education can't make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
-- Bel Kaufman -
Historical judgement is not a variety of knowledge, it is knowledge itself; it is the form which completely fills and exhausts the field of knowing, leaving no room for anything else.
-- Benedetto Croce -
The basis of the discovery is imagination, careful reasoning and experimentation where the use of knowledge created by those who came before is an important component.
-- Bengt I. Samuelsson -
Knowledge makes people special. Knowledge enriches life itself.
-- Benjamin Carson -
The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
It is knowledge that influences and equalizes the social condition of man; that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common, and enjoyments which are universal.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
-- Benjamin Franklin
