All Quotes By Tag: Knowledge

“As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter, its role in our lives is salutary. It becomes dangerous, on the other hand, when, instead of awakening us to the personal life of the mind, reading tends to take its place, when the truth no longer appears to us as an ideal which we can realize only by the intimate progress of our own thought and the efforts of our heart, but as something material, deposited between the leaves of books like a honey fully prepared by others and which we need only take the trouble to reach down from the shelves of libraries and then sample passively in a perfect repose of mind and body.”

“Do you believe that you really have a desire to learn, or would you, had you been left alone from birth, be totally primitive and beastlike in your thoughts and feelings?”

“Life can give everything to whoever tries to understand and is willing to receive new knowledge.”

“I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, — blown and flared by passion’s storm, — and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.”

“I want to oppose the idea that the school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which one has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialized training in school appear possible […] The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgement should always be placed foremost.”

“But maybe that isn’t possible. Maybe the mind of the majority is always the healthy mind, simply by virtue of its numbers. Maybe it’s the definition of madness to believe I’m right and everyone else if wrong, to find my thoughts rational and reasonable when almost the entire world finds them damaged and flawed.”

“Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.”

“Knowledge counts but common sense matters.”

“Everyone in the life before was cranky, I think, because they just wanted to know.–After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned”

“The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.”

“To ‘know Thyself’ is considered quite an accomplishment.”

“The sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read, we shall never come to the end of our story-book.”(Introductory lecture as professor of Latin at University College, London, 3 October 1892)”

“Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.”

“All children are atheists, they have no idea of God.”

“Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.”[Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking (The Creativity Post, December 6, 2011)]”