Quotes About Knowledge

Teach a parrot the terms 'supply and demand' and you've got an economist.

There's simply no substitute for experience in terms of aviation safety.

I'm an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call 'the last illusion.' The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what's going on but that the planets know what's going on.

Money can be taken away from you, by the IRS or by pistol. That's why I always measure riches in terms of wisdom. No one can ever take from you what you know.

In terms of the way people see me, it breaks down into two very clear and distinct groups: those who think they know me from reading the papers and those who really know me by reading my books.

I have been a professor, and I have been a policymaker, and as a professor, you think in terms of truth or absolutes.

I got as much information as I could, so I wouldn't look stupid, but this is a post 9/11 world and there's only so much you can do with the FBI in terms of research.

The benefits of science are not to be reckoned only in terms of the physical.

When you're doing mountain rescue, you don't take a doctorate in mountain rescue; you look for somebody who knows the terrain. It's about context.

You should be a person inside the world with knowledge of your terrain. And if you lock yourself into the 2,000-by-3,000-square-mile, lower-48 box of the United States, you're going to be frustrated by its limitations. You gotta think outside the box.

A writer could spend years reading already-published books just to gain a grasp of the historical terrain.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

I'm terrible with tech. But I'm good with jargon. I can sound like I know what I'm doing.

It's a terrible thing to speak well and be wrong.

You know, it is a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think that you actually know what you're talking about.

I'm not terribly science-y. I couldn't tell you what's the binomial equation or how many atoms in a mole.

I'm not terribly conversant with children's literature in general. I tend to read books for adults, being an adult.

Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right.

I'm not terribly intelligent - I have no university degree, you know.

People confuse being full of words with being terribly intelligent and informed.

People are always asking me on to quizzes - they think I know all the answers because I burble on so, but I don't do terribly well.

I have an old brain but a terrific memory.

Don't go into something you actually don't know much about, in the hopes that you're going to get really financially successful and rewarded... even though people think you're, like, terrific.