Quotes About Knowledge

If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?

How can knowing something be sinful?

Who are you? the woman said at last. Lyra Silver— No, where d'you come from? What are you? How do you know things like this? Wearily Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.

Eve was tempted not by wealth or love but by knowledge.

We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of Libraries it opens, not the number it closes down.

Knowledge is like water: it always finds gaps to leak through. There are too many people, too many journals, too many places of learning, who already know something about it.

There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

You know, it isn't really surprising that there are things about ourselves that still remain a mystery to us," he said. "Maybe we should be comforted that the knowledge is there, even if it's withheld for a while.

But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know

Do you think I need anything else?" "You could do with some sense," came the reply. "Some faculty to enable you to recognize wisdom and incline you to respect and obey it.

Everything means something, Lyra said severely. We just have to find out how to read it.

A genuine scientist would love the subject for itself; I think I love science for the stories that are told about it.

I've just read it so much, it memorized itself.

la historia de la vida humana ha consistido en una lucha entre la sabiduría y la estupidez.

Everything means something," Lyra said severely. "We just have to find out how to read it.

Then excuse me, Miss Silver, but they have separated their intelligences from their other faculties. And that is not an intelligent thing to do.

Existem muitas coisas no mundo que ainda não aprendemos a ler.

And when Rusakov discovered Dust, at last there was physical proof that something happened when innocence changed into experience.

And was it true before Pythagoras realized it?" Malcolm thought. "Yes," he said. "It must have been." "So he didn't invent it. He discovered it." "Yes." "Good. Now let's take one of the alethiometer symbols.

Maybe it means nothing. It just is. Everything means something, Lyra said severely. We just have to find out how to read it.

Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other.

And we have the right to refuse to guide them if they lie, or if they hold anything back, or if they have nothing to tell us. If they live in the world, they should see and touch and hear and love and learn things. We shall make an exception for infants who have not had time to learn anything, but otherwise, if they come down here bringing nothing, we shall not guide them out.

He couldn't possibly have said why. He knew it at once, as strongly as he knew that fire burned and kindness was good.

Sounds like what we call physics, your experimental theology. You want scientists, not theologians.