Quotes About Knowledge

But astronomy is, quite genuinely, far simpler than the human sciences.

I have often been struck in Britain by this sort of thing—by how mysteriously well educated people from unprivileged backgrounds so often are, how the most unlikely people will tell you plant names in Latin or turn out to be experts on the politics of ancient Thrace or irrigation techniques at Glanum.

Male ignorance of female anatomy is quite arresting, it appears, particularly when you consider how keen they are to get to know it in other respects.

We have now reached a level in which many people are not merely unacquainted with the fundamentals of punctuation, but don't evidently realize that there are fundamentals.

Today's mathematics is intimately bound up with two key areas of human knowledge and activity: the natural world, and the society in which we live.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is essentially being too stupid to appreciate how stupid you are.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is basically being too stupid to know how stupid you are. That

But one must be careful when speaking of 'experimental science' before the Enlightenment, for it often meant demonstrating what one already knew to be the case – and if experiment seemed to contradict axiomatic reason, so much the worse for experiment.

The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., contains about seven thousand works on Shakespeare—twenty years' worth of reading if read at the rate of one a day—and, as this volume slimly attests, the number keeps growing.

Science is about making stuff, just as much as it is about understanding stuff.

we know more about how ancient Greeks and Romans sat or reclined than we do about the English of eight hundred years ago.

Dr. Tarnya Cooper, curator of sixteenth-century portraits at the gallery, told me one day when I set off to find out what we could know and reasonably assume about the most venerated figure of the English language.

But if you're not giving the kids the lessons because the parents can't help them, then those kids, when they become parents, won't have the core skills either, will they?

His knowledge of war has fed a passion for peace.

only stupid one's

I had it perfect the first time, but I had to lose it to know.

In my view, investing in public libraries is an investment in the nation's future. --Bill Gates (1955-)

But giving people more information can help them make better choices.

It's the main thing I do in my life. I read and I chew glasses. That's my job. -- WSJ interview, 9/10/19

I'm glad I've invested all that time learning about electricity. For one thing, it was a great father-son activity. (Seriously.)

If you're a serious-minded leader, you will read.

I hate stupidity, but what I hate even more is when people actually brag about it.

I'm not a Christian, but I have read his book.

Stupidity is not another way of knowing things.