Quotes About Knowledge

Were textbooks to disappear tomorrow, and with them the treasures that they contain, it would take centuries to rediscover the calculus, but only days to recover our debts, and with our debts, the numbers that express them.

E=mc2 is even better than the best poetry: "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

Thus, in scientific research, a great deal of our thinking is in terms of theories. The word 'theory' derives from the Greek 'theoria', which has the same root as 'theatre', in a word meaning 'to view' or 'to make a spectacle'. Thus, it might be said that a theory is primarily a form of insight, i.e. a way of looking at the world, and not a form of knowledge of how the world is.

What prevents theoretical insights from going beyond existing limitations and changing to meet new facts is just the belief that theories give true knowledge of reality (which implies, of course, that they need never change).

If we supposed that theories gave true knowledge, corresponding to 'reality as it is', then we would have to conclude that Newtonian theory was true until around 1900, after which it suddenly became false, while relativity and quantum theory suddenly became the truth. Such an absurd conclusion does not arise, however, if we say that all theories are insights, which are neither true nor false but, rather, clear in certain domains, and unclear when extended beyond these domains.

we merely say that man is continually developing new forms of insight, which are clear up to a point and then tend to become unclear. In this activity, there is evidently no reason to suppose that there is or will be a final form of insight (corresponding to absolute truth)

I feel as though I am swimming in an ocean of knowledge with but a teaspoon to consume it.

Don't you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

There's a terror in knowing what the world is about

The moment you know you know you know.

knowing nothing can get you humiliated and knowing a little bit can get you killed, but knowing all of it will bring you power.

When I go to a bar, I don't go looking for a girl who knows the capital of Maine.

science demands a terrible price - that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not.

where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.

Information is not like money or any other commodity. The cracks that it can slip through are almost infinitely small, and it can be duplicated at almost zero cost. Soon information will be like air, like the weather, and as easy to control.

The species greatest harvest ? words.

News is something worth knowing that you didn't know already. (by an "earnest young woman" in his journalism class)

To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.

You haven't read anything until you've comprehended it.

What you really want is to be able to pick up a book and understand what the author is saying in the least amount of time.

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school. 42% of college students never read another book after college. 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year. 70% of US adults have not been to a bookstore in the last five years. 57% of new books are not read to completion. Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

Does asking oneself these questions in an attempt to see how the machine works spoil the enjoyment? It hasn't for me. Music isn't fragile. Knowing how the body works doesn't take away from the pleasure of living.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know and the more you know that you don't know.

Everyone is told just as much as he needs to know, including the self.