QUOTES ON KNOWLEDGE

ALBERT EINSTEIN:
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.

ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.

ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

ANAIS NIN:
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH:
If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.

BENJAMIN JOWETT:
We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.

BENJAMIN SPOCK:
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

BERTRAND RUSSELL:
The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

BERTRAND RUSSELL:
Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living.
adapted

BLAISE PASCAL:
We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

BUCKMINSTER FULLER:
Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.

CARL JUNG:
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

CARL ROGERS:
If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY:
There was so much handwriting on the wall that even the wall fell down.

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY:
There is no squabbling so violent as that between people who accepted an idea yesterday and those who will accept the same idea tomorrow.

CORLISS LAMONT:
Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

DEAN WILLIAM R. INGE:
The aim of education is the knowledge not of fact, but of values.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS:
The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

EPICTETUS:
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.

FRANK HERBERT:
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

GOETHE:
Knowing is not enough; we must apply!

HENRI BERGSON:
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU:
It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU:
I was determined to know beans. Walden

HENRY DAVID THOREAU:
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

HERAKLIETOS OF EPHESOS:
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.
Knowledge is not intelligence.
In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected.
Change alone is unchanging.
The same road goes both up and down.
The beginning of a circle is also its end.
Not I, but the world says it: all is one.
And yet everything comes in season.

HORACE MANN:
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.

IMMANUEL KANT:
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

IMMANUEL KANT:
Intuition and concepts constitute ... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

IMMANUEL KANT:
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

JAMES MADISON:
A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

JAMES MADISON:
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

JOHN ADAMS:
The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of the rich men in the country.

JOHN DEWEY:
In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion.
The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy

JOHN NAISBITT:
We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.

JOHN NAISBITT:
Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.

JOYCE BROTHERS:
Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.

KAHLIL GIBRAN:
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER:
I don't believe in intuition. When you get sudden flashes of perception, it is just the brain working faster than usual. But you've been getting ready to know it for a long time, and when it comes, you feel you've known it always.

LEONARDO DA VINCI:
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

MALCOLM FORBES:
The dumbest people I know are those who know it all.

MARGARET FULLER:
If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.

MARGARET MEAD:
I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

MARIA MITCHELL:
We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more we are capable of seeing.

MARK TWAIN:
All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.
1908, notebook

MARK TWAIN:
If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.

MARK VAN DOREN:
Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at this moment exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with it. Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of knowledge and use it better.

MARTIN FISCHER:
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

MOLLEEN MATSUMURA:
Reason guides our attempt to understand the world about us. Both reason and compassion guide our efforts to apply that knowledge ethically, to understand other people, and have ethical relationships with other people.
2/95

PAULO FREIRE:
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

PEARL S. BUCK:
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
PETER F. DRUCKER:
Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability, and to prevent, or at least to slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work -- on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself -- it must be organized for constant change.

PLATO:
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

PLOTINUS:
Knowledge has three degrees -- opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition.

PROVERBS 17:28:
Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

RACHEL CARSON:
If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON:
Great are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

RENE DESCARTES:
The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.

RICHARD CECIL:
The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.

ROBERT FULGHUM:
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.

ROBERT GRAVES:
Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.

SAMUEL JOHNSON :
Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

STEPHEN JAY GOULD:
I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

THOMAS H. HUXLEY:
The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

THOMAS H. HUXLEY:
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever or whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

UMBERTO ECO:
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

UNKNOWN:
The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are -- as soon as we quit pretending we're small or unholy.

VERNON COOPER:
These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

WILLIAM GOLDING:
Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:
Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:
It is a wise father that knows his own child.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.