Quotes About Knowledge

It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong. —Tom Stoppard, Arcadia, 1993

This was the first scientific demonstration that the unconscious mind possesses knowledge that escapes the conscious mind.

When the leading voices of the emotionalist Republic championed "feeling," it was not as a source of knowledge or of human happiness, but of freedom: the freedom from objectivity, method, logic, fact. It was feeling not as an alleged means to truth, but as the nullification of thought.

the first requirement of expanding his knowledge is induction, which is in essence the process of inferring a generalization from observations.

Knowledge is a hierarchy; it consists of integrations, each level making the next possible and in due course necessary. Thinking, we can say, consists of integrating integrations.

Human knowledge is not a mere collection, but a structure; it is a single body of interrelated cognitions.

By virtue of being able directly to discriminate one aspect of reality, a consciousness cannot discriminate some other aspect that would require a different kind of sense organs. Whatever facts the senses do register, however, are facts. And these facts are what lead a mind eventually to the rest of its knowledge.

For those new to philosophy, its two fundamental branches are metaphysics, which studies the nature of existence, and epistemology, which studies man's means of knowledge.

Faith," writes Hitler, is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward.12

It is obvious, therefore, why Nazi (and Fascist) leaders insist on faith from their followers. "Faith," writes Hitler, is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward.12

Philosophy is the study of the nature of existence, of knowledge, and of values.

The branch of philosophy that studies knowledge is epistemology.

The branch of philosophy that studies values is ethics (or morality), which rests on both the above branches—on a view of the world in which man acts, and of man's nature, including his means of knowledge.

So the first issue of a proper method is always set the proper context. What are you counting on? What do you already know by the time you get to this point? What are you taking for granted that enables you to study this particular topic?

To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve-Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues ... 20

I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive—nor will we deserve to.

In the Old Testament, guilt enters the world by way of a bite from a fruit.

For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe that "Unless I believe, I shall not understand." —ANSELM OF CANTERBURY1

Truth is both reason and revelation—and both can surprise us.

All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions

All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.

He who thinks little errs much…

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!