Knowledge quotes
2.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination."
"In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed."
"I like to have a person's knowledge comprehend more than one class of topics, one row of shelves. I like a person who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy."
"It is easy to see, though it scarcely needs to be pointed out, since it is involved in the fact that Reason is set aside, that faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either a knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and historical as indifferent, or it is pure historical knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical."
"Education is cheap; experience is expensive."
"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."
"The key to life is to become skillful enough to be able to do rewarding things."
"I say there is no darkness but ignorance."
"He who repeats what he does not understand is no better than an ass that is loaded with books."
"No one can take it away from you."
"We know that there is an infinite, and we know not its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is a numerical infinity. But we know not of what kind; it is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd; for the addition of a unit does not change its nature; yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this certainly holds of every finite number). Thus we may quite well know that there is a God without knowing what He is."
"The eye sees what it brings the power to see."
"Activity is the only road to knowledge."
"I shall devote only a few lines to the expression of my belief in the importance of science it is by this daily striving after knowledge that man has raised himself to the unique position he occupies on earth, and that his power and well-being have continually increased."
"There has always been the same amount of light in the world. The new and missing stars, the comets and eclipses, do not affect thegeneral illumination, for only our glasses appreciate them."
"Those who know the TRUTH are not equal to those who love it."
"I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts."
"One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas."
"Nature avenges herself speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her waves. She is no literalist. Every thing must be taken genially, and we must be at the top of our condition, to understand any thing rightly."
"You know we're constantly taking. We don't make most of the food we eat, we don't grow it, anyway. We wear clothes other people make, we speak a language other people developed, we use a mathematics other people evolved and spent their lives building. I mean we're constantly taking things. It's a wonderful ecstatic feeling to create something and put it into the pool of human experience and knowledge."
