Quotes About Knowledge

If we were to put into practice what we know ... but that is the point.

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants.

You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we'll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.

One does not learn anything except by believing something, and -- conversely -- if one doubts everything one learns nothing. On the other hand, believing everything uncritically is the road to disaster. The faculty of doubt is essential. But as I have argued, rational doubt always rests on faith and not vice versa. The relationship between the two cannot be reversed.

If the relativist claims that, since all reasoning is embodied in a particular social context, no claim to know the truth can be sustained, one has to ask for the basis on which this claim is made. It is, after all, a claim to know something about reality — namely that reality is unknowable.

The sociology of knowledge has taught us to recognize the fact, which is obvious once it is stated, that in every human society there is what Peter Berger calls a "plausibility structure," a structure of assumptions and practices which determine what beliefs are plausible and what are not. It is easier to see the working of the plausibility structure in a culture of a different time or place than it is to recognize it in one's own.

Natural theology, in other words, is in no way a step on the way toward the theology which takes God's self-revelation as its starting point. It is more likely, in fact, to lead in the opposite direction.

But we do not reach truth unless we allow ourselves to be exposed to and drawn by a truth which is beyond our present understanding.

I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.

I was then a young and omniscient student (alas, I was soon to lose both these virtues).

We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.

Every age has its characteristic, and our present one is not behind its predecessors in that respect ; it is the age of systems, every system enforced by a treatise.

Once set a strong mind thinking, and you have done all that it needs for its education.

Truth is like the philosopher's stone, a thing not to be discovered.

The process of learning is a nonstop orgy of wonderment.

That was one thing about books: once you read them they couldn't be unread.

he imagined another life for himself as one of these silent scholars, buried in his research like a guinea pig in its wood shavings, nibbling away steadily after some arcane piece of knowledge in the hope of making an addition, however imperceptible, to the collective pile.

The study of magic is not a science, it is not an art, and it is not a religion. Magic is a craft. When we do magic, we do not wish and we do not pray. We rely upon our will and our knowledge and our skill to make a specific change to the world.

It didn't matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least halfway home. The

That was one thing about books: once you read them they couldn't be unread. But

You want to know what it's like to be a demon? Imagine knowing, always and forever, that you are right, and that everyone and everything else is wrong.

The librarian had imagined he could summon a given book to perch on his hand just by shouting out its call number, but in actuality they were just too willful, and some were actively predatory. The

Theories about life were always bullshit.

It didn't matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least half-way home