Quotes About Knowledge

Sometimes I understood what a word meant from reading but had never met it in life.

I wouldn't trade the twenty-first century for any other. We have toilet paper and pasteurization and Novocain and Mexican avocados all winter long. And plenty of mysteries remain: what causes premature labor, or what exactly the universe is made of. The biology of deep oceans, the nature of gravity, the reason we sleep, the mechanisms of migration; thousands of questions still await answers.

So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

A line comes back to Marie-Laure from Jules Verne: Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

For in those days I had no idea that many of the greatest books are like a forest, and that the best way to get to know them is to wander right into the middle and get lost.

We do not know what or how to teach children, because we do not know what a child is, and we do not know what a child is, because we do not know what man is -- and Him from whom and for whom man is.

This was Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica ("big nose"). A senior politician who had held all the great offices of state and was now pontifex maximus, or high priest, he had a high opinion of himself: at a noisy public meeting, he once said, "Be quiet, please, citizens. I know more about the public interest than you do.

not (as most do) to learn my trade in the Forum, but so far as possible to enter the Forum already trained.

Fox as Hedgehog

One of these was Philo of Larisa, head of the Academy in Athens, founded by Plato three hundred years before. He inspired Cicero with a passion for philosophy, and in particular for the theories of Skepticism, which asserted that knowledge of the nature of things is in the nature of things unattainable. Such ideas were well judged to appeal to a student of rhetoric who had learned to argue all sides of a case.

Theories in the natural sciences which have been replaced by others which do the same job better are of no interest to the current practice of science. This cannot be the case where those theories have helped to constitute what they interpret or explicate. The

How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them

I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation.

You cannot defeat your enemies until you know who they are.

You weren't in any real danger. We knew exactly where you were all the time.

There are few things in the world that we don't know. Science has explained everything away.

There were books everywhere, hundreds of them on shelves that had been designed to fit into every nook and cranny, and it goes without saying that anyone who collects books can't be all bad.

One can think of the truth as eine vertiefung – a sort of deep valley which may not be visible from a distance but which will come upon you quite suddenly. There are many ways to arrive there.

aunque, como ya he contado, procuraba no llenar su mente con información que en su opinión careciera de valor material. Que el cielo protegiera al hombre que intentara entablar una conversación con él acerca de política o filosofía: un niño de diez años sabría más. Una cosa puedo decir acerca de aquella tarde:

This was a woman who didn't just go to bed with a book. She went to bed with a library.

Books grow old faster when they're not being read

He knew what he was doing. So I never understood how he could have been so bloody stupid. The simple fact of the matter is that there was no reason for him to die.

I thought you'd have known that, you being a TV writer.

could hear his voice. "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas…