Quotes About Knowledge

I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.

Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It's just the best we have. In this respect, as in many others, it's like democracy. Science by itself cannot advocate courses of human action, but it can certainly illuminate the possible consequences of alternative courses of action.

intellectual capacity is no guarantee against being dead wrong.

Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science — by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans — teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us.

Literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. But there are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom. But reading is still the path.

The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.

better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.

Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental new insights.

Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family?

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work.

In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind.

The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief and sedentary hiatus we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds though through the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth.

Across the sea of space. The stars are other suns. We have traveled this way before. And there is much to be learned.

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.

Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science.

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

Censoring] knowledge, telling people what they must think and what ideas are impermissible, which lines of evidence may not be pursued, is the aperture to thought police, foolish and incompetent decision-making, and long-term decline.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may bother those in power; we are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible, and which are not. …

In that case, on behalf of Earthlife, I urge that, with full knowledge of our limitations, we vastly increase our knowledge of the Solar System and then begin to settle other worlds.

If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that; it becomes stale, soon learned only by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.