All Quotes By Tag: Knowledge

“Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.”

“We need learn what we need to learn, know what we need to know, and do what we need to do.”

“Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.”

“How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.”

“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns- the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

“When most of the greatest individuals in history were misunderstood and you’ve spent so much of your own adult life misunderstood, you can’t help but believe that the majority of people know very little worth knowing.”

“Everything I need to know… I learned in kindergarten.”

“…Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes.[Letters to John Taylor, 1814, XVIII, p. 484]”

“Human knowledge consists not only of libraries of parchment and ink – it is also comprised of the volumes of knowledge that are written on the human heart, chiselled on the human soul, and engraved on the human psyche. ”

“A lover exists only in fragments, a dozen or so if the romance is new, a thousand if we’re married to him, and out of those fragments our heart constructs an entire person. What we each create, since whatever is missing is filled by our imagination, is the person we wish him to be. The less we know him, of course, the more we love him. And that’s why we always remember that first rapturous night when he was a stranger, and why this rapture returns only when he’s dead.”

“I was hugely impressed… was the ultimate example of a man who knew what he didn’t know, was perfectly willing to admit it, and didn’t want to leave until he understood. That’s heroic to me. I wish every grad student had that attitude.”

“Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.”

“Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us.”

“My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant.”

“Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, “My current model” — or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel — “contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised.” In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.”