Quotes About Knowledge

The old scientific idea of episteme-of absoutely certain, demonstrable knowledge-has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tentative. Only in our subjective experiences of conviction, in our subjective faith, can we be 'absolutely certain'.

Moreover, if we could show, on general logical grounds, that the scientific quest is likely to succeed, one could not understand why anything like success has been so rare in the long history of human endeavours to know more about our world.

I believe I learned more about the theory of knowledge from my dear omniscient master Adalbert Pösch than from any other of my teachers. None did so much to turn me into a disciple of Socrates. For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance.

For myself, I am interested in science and in philosophy only because I want to learn something about the riddle of the world in which we live, and the riddle of man's knowledge of that world. And I believe that only a revival of interest in these riddles can save the sciences and philosophy from an obscurantist faith in the expert's special skill and in his personal knowledge and authority.

We should realize that, if [Socrates] demanded that the wisest men should rule, he clearly stressed that he did not mean the learned men; in fact, he was skeptical of all professional learnedness, whether it was that of the philosophers or of the learned men of his own generation, the Sophists. The wisdom he meant was of a different kind. It was simply the realization: how little do I know! Those who did not know this, he taught, knew nothing at all. This is the true scientific spirit.

Haydi mast?rl?lar ve doktoral?lar, k?z??t?r?n ortal???! (Goethe, Faust)

Önemli olan, eylemlerimizin önceden kestirilemeyen sonuçlar? hakk?nda ne kadar az bilgiye sahip olabilece?imizin bilincinde olmam?zd?r.

Hiçbir ?ey bilmiyoruz - bu birincisi. Bu yüzden çok alçakgönüllü olmal?y?z - bu ikincisi. Bilmedi?imiz halde bildi?imizi iddia etmemeliyiz. - bu da üçüncüsü. Halka sevdirmek istedi?im yakla??m kabaca budur. Ama gelece?i pek parlak görünmüyor. (Hayat Problem Çözmektir)

In other words, even if all that can be known were known to you, you still wouldn't know anything because none of this has an effect on what you are. But the moment you know Yourself, in the non-knowing of what you are or what you are not, you know All! This is the paradox of Knowledge: you know yourself in the Absolute not-knowing because you are That what is unknowable, you are the ungraspable, the incomprehensible, without a second. And any idea or possibility of knowing creates duality.

Armiger leaned over her and kissed her cheek. "Which what do I prefer?" "Do you prefer making love or reading?" He voice held a teasing note, but he had learned there were frequently hidden needs behind her teasing questions. "To read is to make love to the world," he said. "But to make love to a woman is to feel like the world is reading you.

dangerous trade, and she knew there was a bevy of analysts

Economics is hard. Really hard. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-boggingly hard it is. I mean you may think doing the Sunday Times crossword is difficult, but that's just peanuts to economics. And because it is so hard, people shouldn't blithely go shooting their mouths off about it, and pretending like it's so easy. In fact, we would all be better off if we just ignored these clowns.

For my part, seventeen years after my first PhD coursework, I still feel ill at ease with my grasp of many issues, and I am fairly confident that this is not just a question of limited intellect.

Science consistently produces a new crop of miraculous truths and dazzling devices every year.

Each of us have things and thoughts and descriptions of an amazing universe in our possession that kings in the 17th Century would have gone to war to possess.

wherever there is ignorance, you can always find arrogance.

If there is something in my food that somebody says is a poison, I want to have the chemistry explained and decide for myself whether or not I want to eat it.

I believe in books," her friend whispered. "We have to save them all.

You seem to have an uncommon knowledge of young people. May I ask if you are, or have been, a teacher?" "Oh, no!" Mrs. Carey remarked with a smile, "I am just a mother,--that's all! Good night.

The young who are male can never resist showing off their knowledge, no doubt because they possess so little.

Nothing opens up the mind and the heart like books do, and so they have the power to change the whole world. That's why the are burning books, Ava. To stop us thinking, and feeling, and imagining...

Some kinds of order were too vast for a human to know. But below the chaos of a single human life, you could trust that a cosmic breve was sounding.

Until a thing was seen, could it be said to exist? And if his eye through the telescope were the one that brought a certain star into existence, did not that make him a creator?

The dragons of twentieth-century life are ignorance, incompetence, slackness and disloyalty, she said.