Quotes About Knowledge

Sitting down and going through a book from cover to cover doesn't make sense," he says. "It's not a good use of my time, as I can get all the information I need faster through the Web." As soon as you learn to be "a skilled hunter" online, he argues, books become superfluous.

The connection between doing and knowing is breaking down.

We should imitate bees," Seneca wrote, "and we should keep in separate compartments whatever we have collected from our diverse reading, for things conserved separately keep better. Then, diligently applying all the resources of our native talent, we should mingle all the various nectars we have tasted, and then turn them into a single sweet substance, in such a way that, even if it is apparent where it originated, it appears quite different from what it was in its original state.

Automation severs ends from means. It makes getting what we want easier, but it distances us from the work of knowing.

But intellectually, our ancestors' oral culture was in many ways a shallower one than our own.

These include all the tools we use to extend or support our mental powers—to find and classify information, to formulate and articulate ideas, to share know-how and knowledge, to take measurements and perform calculations, to expand the capacity of our memory.

We are how we read.

All work is knowledge work. The carpenter's mind is no less animated and engaged than the actuary's. The architect's accomplishments depend as much on the body and its senses as the hunter's do.

What we're experiencing is, in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization: we are evolving from being cultivators of personal knowledge to being hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest.

We've reached the point where a Rhodes Scholar like Florida State's Joe O'Shea—a philosophy major, no less—is comfortable admitting not only that he doesn't read books but that he doesn't see any particular need to read them.

A hundred years ago, we arrived at such as moment with technologies that extend man's physical powers. We are at another such moment today with technologies that extend our intellectual power

When you are called to a sick man, be sure you know what the matter is — if you do not know, nature can do a great deal better than you can guess.

Can we treat animal behavior with the same medicines, therapies, and approaches we use on humans? To me, the answer is an obvious yes. You could effectively teach medical students brain anatomy using the brains of dogs. Transferring what you learned about dog brains to knowledge of human brain anatomy would be a breeze.

Knowing is the easy part; saying it out loud is the hard part.

Culture is sustained in our synapses...It's more than what can be reduced to binary code and uploaded onto the Net. To remain vital, culture must be renewed in the minds of the members of every generation. Outsource memory, and culture withers.

We don't constrain our mental powers when we store new long-term memories. We strengthen them. With each expansion of our memory comes an enlargement of our intelligence. The Web provides a convenient and compelling supplement to personal memory - but when we start using the Web as a substitute for personal memory, by bypassing the inner processes of consolidation, we risk emptying our minds of their riches.

With the 'death' of God worldly values proliferate, separate out and are drawn into endless conflict with one another. This process leads to the formation of a world torn by an infinite number of value-conflicts, for 'rational' (scientific) knowledge, which, for Weber, is limited to questions of fact rather than value, is unable to resolve the crisis of values that it itself inaugurated.

Nicholas Guild

Huxley believed that anyone "with a gift for the knowledge of ultimate reality" could do far more good "by sticking to his curious activities on the margin of society than by going to the centre and trying to improve matters there.

one is creeping into middle age and is less easily distracted by one's appetites, which have grown feebler, and by one's passions, which seems such a bore - all but the consuming desire for knowledge and understanding. That grows. - Aldous Huxley

we have been content to drivel along with our current educational systems, most of which neglect all the essential things and leave their victims for all intents and purposes quite untrained. - Aldous Huxley, 1934

Huxley believed tat anyone "with a gift for the knowledge of ultimate reality" could do far more good "by sticking to his curious activities on the margin of society than by going to the centre and trying to improve matters there.

America is the best half-educated country in the world.

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.