Quotes About Knowledge

Sometimes knowledge was an awful thing.

We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so.

They didn't understand what they were doing. I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.

Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.

Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other.

The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.

Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn't true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and as misguided, as the child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly.

These kids were smart, they were enthusiastic, and they were young enough so that the schools hadn't destroyed all their interest in learning. They could still actually use their brains, which in Thorne's view was a sure sign they hadn't yet completed a formal education.

If you [don't] know history, then [you don't] know anything. You [are] a leaf that [doesn't] know it [is] part of a tree.

It's hard to observe without imposing a theory to explain what we're seeing, but the trouble with theories, as Einstein said, is that they explain not only what is observed but what CAN BE observed. We start to build expectations based on our theories. And often those expectations get in the way.

I suspect that scientists are driven by the sense that the world out there - reality - contains a hidden order, and the scientist is trying to elucidate the hidden order in our reality. And that impulse is what the scientist shares with the mystic. The impulse to get to the bottom of things. To know how the world really works. To know the nature of things.

People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity-our most necessary resourse?

But as Alston Chase put it, "when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.

Understanding is a delaying tactic.

People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But

Tim watched until he was sure the velociraptor was coming toward the kitchen. Was it following their scent? All the books said dinosaurs had a poor sense of smell, but this one seemed to do just fine. Anyway, what did books know? Here was the real thing.

The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion.

In his view, a theory was nothing more than a substitute for experience put forth by someone who didn't know what he was talking about.

Wait," Lex said. "You're confusing it.…" "Will you shut up! You don't know anything about computers!

En cierto sentido, no estamos integrados más que por recuerdos. Nuestra personalidad se estructura a partir de recuerdos, nuestra vida está organizada en torno a recuerdos, nuestras culturas se erigen sobre los cimientos de los recuerdos compartidos, a los que denominamos historia y ciencia. Y desistir de un recuerdo, desistir del conocimiento, desistir de los pasado no es fácil.

But as a professor who was popular with his students—and who advocated general education—Thorne found himself swimming against the tide. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon.

Thorne's dislike of theory was legendary. In his view, a theory was nothing more than a substitute for experience put forth by someone who didn't know what he was talking about.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. —MARK TWAIN