Quotes About Knowledge

Everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject.

is—it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it.

To the philosopher, infinity, knowledge, movement, empirical laws, etc., are things just as familiar {as family relations}. And as her dead brother and uncle are present to the peasant woman, thus Plato, Spinoza, etc. are present to the philosopher. The one has as much reality as the other, but the latter are immortal.

By means of the simple folk remedy of ascribing to feeling what is the millennia-long labor of reason and of its understanding, all are spared the bother of rational insight and knowledge.

Aber die Philosophie soll keine Erzählung dessen sein, was geschieht, sondern eine Erkenntnis dessen, was wahr darin ist, und aus dem Wahren soll sie ferner das begreifen, was in der Erzählung als ein bloßes Geschehen erscheint.

Man is an animal, but even in his animal functions, he is not confined to the implicit, as the animal is; he becomes conscious of them, recognizes them, and lifts them, as, for instance, the process of digestion, into self-conscious science. In this way man breaks the barrier of his implicit and immediate character, so that precisely because he knows that he is an animal, he ceases to be an animal and attains knowledge of himself as spirit.

De uil van Minerva vliegt pas uit bij het invallen van de duisternis.

The state of nature is in theory what we find it in practice. Freedom as the ideal of the original state of nature does not exist as original and nature. It must first be acquired and won; and that is possible only through an infinite process of the discipline of knowledge and will power. The state of nature, therefore is rather the state of injustice, violence, untamed natural impulses – of inhuman deeds and emotions.

The real is the rational, and the rational is the real.

Todos los atenienses estaban iniciados en los misterios eleusinos; solo Sócrates no lo estaba, porque quería conservar las manos libres para que, si fundaba algo en el pensamiento, no le acusasen de haberlo sabido por los misterios eleusinos. Sócrates sabía que la ciencia y el arte no brotan de los misterios y que la sabiduría jamás se halla en el secreto. Antes bien, la verdadera ciencia está en el campo abierto de la conciencia.

Aufklärung des Verstands macht zwar klüger, aber nicht besser.

It is not the purpose of philosophy to edify

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

daß diese Furcht zu irren schon der Irrtum selbst ist.

What is familiar and well known as such is not really known for the very reason that it is familiar and well known.

Know your product. Know your customer. And never, ever, underestimate the power of greed.

we ought to think with the learned, and speak with the vulgar .

truly my opinion is, that all our opinions are alike vain and uncertain. what we approve today, we condemn tomorrow. we keep a stir about knowledge, and spend our lives in the pursuit of it, when, alas! we know nothing all the while: nor do i think it possible for us to ever know anything in this life. our faculties are too narrow and too few. nature certainly never intended us for speculation.

In vain do we extend our view into the heavens, and pry into the entrails of the earth, in vain do we consult the writings of learned men, and trace the dark footsteps of antiquity; we need only draw the curtain of words, to behold the fairest tree of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of our hand.

Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to ourselves--that we have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.

A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remotest centuries.

THE SECOND DIALOGUE

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read. [As quoted in Literary Censorship in England (in Current Opinion , Vol. 55, No. 5, November 1913)]