Quotes About Knowledge

But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

death? Is there such a thing as wisdom, or is what seems such merely the ultimate refinement of folly?

To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory.

Casual experience of life is of very little use to a specialist, such as I aspire to be; good manners are absolutely useless.

scientific knowledge, though difficult, is not mysterious, but open to all who care to take the necessary trouble. The modern intellectual, therefore, inspires no awe, but remains a mere employee; except in a few cases, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, he has failed to inherit the glamour which gave power to his predecessors.

It must be admitted, for the reasons already stated, that logical principles are known to us, and cannot be themselves proved by experience, since all proof presupposes them. In this, therefore, which was the most important point of the controversy, the rationalists were in the right. On the other hand, even that part of our knowledge which is logically independent of experience (in the sense that experience cannot prove it) is yet elicited and caused by experience.

One hundred and fifty years of science have proved more explosive than five thousand years of prescientific culture. It would be absurd to suppose that the explosive power of science is exhausted, or has even reached its maximum. It is far more likely that science will continue for centuries to come to produce more and more rapid changes.

A filosofia, conforme entendo a palavra, é algo intermediário entre a teologia e a ciência. Como a teologia, consiste de especulações sobre assuntos a que o conhecimento exato não conseguiu até agora chegar, mas, como ciência, apela mais à razão humana do que à autoridade, seja esta a da tradição ou a da revelação.

a priori knowledge such as mathematics or logic is general, whereas all experience is particular.

The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty.

We can be sure, he [Kant] says, that anything we shall ever experience must show the characteristics affirmed of it in our a priori knowledge, because these characteristics are due to our own nature, and therefore nothing can ever come into our experience without acquiring these characteristics.

If philosophy is to serve a positive purpose, it must not teach mere skepticism, for, while the dogmatist is harmful, the skeptic is useless. Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance.

When I said that the good life consists of love guided by knowledge, the desire which prompted me was the desire to live such a life as far as possible, and to see others living it; and the logical content of the statement is that, in a community where men live in this way, more desires will be satisfied than in one where there is less love or less knowledge.

Uno de los aspectos más dolorosos de nuestros tiempos es que los estúpidos están muy seguros de sí mismos mientras los inteligentes están llenos de dudas

All the governments of the world adopt elaborate methods of concealing truths which they consider undesirable, and inflict various forms of penalty upon those who spread knowledge which is thought bad for the population. This applies especially to knowledge of the kind which is considered seditious, and the kind which is considered obscene.

The free intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge -- knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain.

Another effect of compulsion in education is that it destroys originality and intellectual interest. Desire for knowledge, at any rate for a good deal of knowledge, is natural to the young, but is generally destroyed by the fact that they are given more than they desire or can assimilate.

Tanr?bilimin kötü yan?, y?k?c? eÄŸilimler yaratmak deÄŸil, böyle davran??lara yüksek bir töre süsü vermek, bilgisiz, barbar çaÄŸlardan kalma al??kanl?klara aç?kça kutsal bir özellik tan?mak olmuÅŸtur.

When admitting that nothing is certain, one must also, I think, admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.

we can only infer it, and can never be directly and immediately aware of it.

The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts. The less you know the hotter you get.

Thus we find that, although the relations of physical objects have all sorts of knowable properties, derived from their correspondence with the relations of sense-data, the physical objects themselves remain unknown in their intrinsic nature, so far at least as can be discovered by means of the senses.

And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

The painter wants to know what things seem to be, the practical man and the philosopher want to know what they are; but the philosopher's wish to know this is stronger than the practical man's, and is more troubled by knowledge as to the difficulties of answering the question.