Quotes About Knowledge

All books are merely delayed dust.

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.

Those who know the least obey the best.

The computer focuses ruthlessly on things that can be represented in numbers. In so doing, it seduces people into thinking that other aspects of knowledge are either unreal or unimportant. The computer treats reason as an instrument for achieving things, not for contemplating things. It narrows dramatically what we know and intended by reason.

The technocrats saw expertise as the only measure of a person.

The issue now and during the next decade is access to the center of gravity of the technocracy, the leading universities that not only teach subjects but train you in the social rituals that allow you to belong to the technocracy.

A president must know what it is he does not know, and he should remain calm in pursuit of it, but there is no obligation to be honest about it.

George Gamow

Today, on a per capita basis, Israel far leads the world in research and technological creativity.

The freer an economy is, the more this human diversity of knowledge will be manifested. By contrast, political power originates in top-down processes-governments, monopolies, regulators, and elite institutions-all attempting to quell human diversity and impose order. Thus power always seeks centralization.

Midas's error was to mistake gold, wealth's monetary measure, for wealth itself. But wealth is not a thing or a random sequence. It is inextricably rooted in hard won knowledge over extended time.

The key issue in economics is not aligning incentives with some putative public good but aligning knowledge with power. Business investments have both a financial and an epistemic yield. Capitalism catalytically joins the two. Capitalist economies grow because they award wealth to its creators, who have already proved that they can increase it. Their tests yield knowledge because they are falsifiable; they can be exposed as wrong. Businesses are subject to failure.

The . . . argument of the expert, that the man who is trained should be the man who is trusted, would be absolutely unanswerable if it were really true that the man who studied a thing and practiced it every day went on seeing more and more of its significance. But he does not. He goes on seeing less and less of its significance

It seems that we had...not a better education, per se, but perhaps more incentive to use it. They learn, but they hardly think.

Well, when it became obvious that magic was going to wreck the computer networks, people tried to preserve portions of the Internet. They took snapshots of their servers and sent the data to a central database at the Library of Congress. The project became known as the Library of Alexandria, because in ancient times Alexandria's library was said to contain all the human knowledge, before some jackass burned it to the ground.

The things you don't know or realize are an ocean, and your mind is a tiny boat upon its waves." Ancient disses were the best.

There was so much I could teach her.

I had once read a book that said a traveler should always have one and it made a lot of sense.

Life is trade; we trade our labor for its fruit, we trade hours of study for knowledge, we trade pleasure for pleasure or sometimes for wealth, security, or offspring.

This was above my pay grade. I had no idea how to deal with this sort of magic. That was okay. I was a quick learner.

You ask the Consort. The Consort knows everything." "Oh," Hakeem said. Keelan pivoted to me. "Consort, please tell us what this is." "I have no idea.

Always remember, knowledge is a product of labor. It is to be shared but never taken. For if you set out to rip knowledge away from others and hoard it like a jealous merchant hoards their wealth, you too will be shunned like this sphinx and banished from the circle of your peers.

People don't tell you their secrets, Ghastek. You have to find them out.

You must understand the nature of a thing before you can end its existence.