"Knowledge comes Of learning well retain'd, unfruitful else."
Read quote
3 likes
Knowledge quotes
Knowledge
2.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Knowledge
Browse quotes that often appear alongside knowledge — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Knowledge quotes (page 38 of 104)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"If the history of England be ever written by one who has the knowledge and the courage,-and both qualities are equally requisite for the undertaking, - the world will be more astonished than when reading the Roman annals by Niebuhr."
Read quote
3 likes
"There is nothing so absurd as knowledge spun too fine."
Read quote
3 likes
"To inquisitive minds like yours and mine the reflection that the quantity of human knowledge bears no proportion to the quantity of human ignorance must be in one view rather pleasing, viz., that though we are to live forever we may be continually amused and delighted with learning something new."
Read quote
3 likes
"All knowledge resolves itself into probability. ... In every judgment, which we can form concerning probability, as well as concerning knowledge, we ought always to correct the first judgment deriv'd from the nature of the object, by another judgment, deriv'd from the nature of the understanding."
Read quote
3 likes
"We need only reflect on what has been prov'd at large, that we are never sensible of any connexion betwixt causes and effects, and that 'tis only by our experience of their constant conjunction, we can arrive at any knowledge of this relation."
Read quote
3 likes
"It seems to me, that the only Objects of the abstract Sciences or of Demonstration is Quantity and Number, and that all Attempts to extend this more perfect Species of Knowledge beyond these Bounds are mere Sophistry and Illusion."
Read quote
3 likes
"Knowledge-full, unfettered knowledge of its own heritage, of freedom's enemies, of the whole world of men and ideas-this knowledge is a free people's surest strength."
Read quote
3 likes
"As soon as the circumstances of an experiment are well known, we stop gathering statistics. ... The effect will occur always without exception, because the cause of the phenomena is accurately defined. Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined,Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined, can we compile statistics. ... we must learn therefore that we compile statistics only when we cannot possibly help it; for in my opinion, statistics can never yield scientific truth."
Read quote
3 likes
"Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge. It is in the darker. It is in the darker regions of science that great men are recognized; they are marked by ideas which light up phenomena hitherto obscure and carry science forward."
Read quote
3 likes
"We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain."
Read quote
3 likes
"What men really want is not knowledge but certainty."
Read quote
3 likes
"I hold all knowledge that is concerned with things that actually exist - all that is commonly called Science - to be of very slight value compared to the knowledge which, like philosophy and mathematics, is concerned with ideal and eternal objects, and is freed from this miserable world which God has made."
Read quote
3 likes
"While the dogmatist is harmful, the sceptic is useless ...; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance. Knowledge is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead of saying 'I know this', we ought to say 'I more or less know something more or less like this'. ... Knowledge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision of arithmetic."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"All that passes for knowledge can be arranged in a hierarchy of degrees of certainty, with arithmetic and the facts of perception at the top."
Read quote
3 likes
"Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then suchand such another proposition is true of that thing.... Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true."
Read quote
3 likes
"Philosophy is that part of science which at present people chose to have opinions about, but which they have no knowledge about. Therefore every advance in knowledge robs philosophy of some problems which formerly it had ...and will belong to science."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge."
Read quote
3 likes