Quotes About Knowledge

What good is making a mistake, if you don't learn from it?

Even now, I believe that to know how is useless if we do not know why. And there are too many who forbid us to ask.

We don't know enough, we'll never know. Oh happy Homer, taking the stars and the Gods for granted.

Actaeon who saw the goddess naked among the leaves and his hounds tore him A little knowledge, a pebble from the shingle A drop from the oceans: who would have dreamed this infinitely little too much.

the collective wisdom of humanity [is] enshrined in its poetry.

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man ... a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.

I don't suppose anybody really knows how bad a thing can be until it actually happens.

The Industrial Revolution was the culmination of the rise of Western civilization that began in Greece twenty-seven centuries ago. It was the product of human freedom and the pursuit of knowledge, which is precisely why it happened where and when it did.

When the Bishop of Gloucester systematically tested Church of England diocesan clergy in 1551, of 311 pastors, 171 could not repeat the Ten Commandments, and 27 did not know the author of the Lord's Prayer.

This partly reflects the Balkanization of history – that scholars attend only to their special time and place. But, for the most part, it reflects that far too many scholars rely on the received wisdom, even on matters central to their subject.

As the distinguished medievalist Warren Hollister (1930–1997) put it in his presidential address to the Pacific Historical Association, "to my mind, anyone who believes that the era that witnessed the building of Chartres Cathedral and the invention of parliament and the university was 'dark' must be mentally retarded—or at best, deeply, deeply, ignorant.

The Mormon definition of life makes the earthly sojourn basically an educative process. Knowledge is necessary to mastery, and the way to deification is through mastery, for not only does education aid man in fulfilling present tasks, it advances him in his eternal progress.

The uncertainty of our senses makes uncertain all that they produce:

Since no one individual can mandate a perfectly accurate description of reality, you must draw from many other people's perceptions to imbue your reality with the deepest possible understanding of its many hues and shades.

My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may — need is the word I use — to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed.

I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation. . . . Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Perhaps it is the nature of man not to wish to know too much about his own nature.

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its "self-help" section: "For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history, and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.

our most famous universities as esteemed as ever.

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.

What is it that we can do with conscious thought that cannot be done unconsciously? The problem is made more elusive by the fact that anything that we do seem originally to require consciousness for appears also to be able to be learnt and then later carried out unconsciously (perhaps by the cerebellum

It is always the case, with mathematics, that a little direct experience of thinking over things on your own can provide a much deeper understanding than merely reading about them.

Thus the robot is incapable of knowing that it was constructed according to the mechanisms M. Since we are aware-or at least can be made aware-that the robot was so constructed, this seems to tell us that we have access to mathematical truths, e.g. Omega (Q(M)), that are beyond the robot's capabilities, despite the fact that the robot's abilities are supposed to be equal of (or in excess of) human capabilities.

Whereas I reject mysticism in its negation of scientific criteria for the furtherance of knowledge, I believe that within an expanded science and mathematics there will be found sufficient mystery ultimately to accommodate even the mystery of mind.