Knowledge Quotes - Page 54

The essence of knowledge is generalization. That fire can be produced by rubbing wood in a certain way is a knowledge derived by generalization from individual experiences; the statement means that rubbing wood in this way will always produce fire. The art of discovery is therefore the art of correct generalization. ... The separation of relevant from irrelevant factors is the beginning of knowledge.

Show me a sensible person who likes himself or herself! I know myself too well to like what I see. I know but too well that I'm not what I'd like to be.

The great Tibetan meditator Gungtang Jampelyang once asked 'What is the difference between a wise man and a fool?' The difference lies in their intention. A wise person is someone who has a good intention, not someone who merely possesses knowledge.

Knowledge of our duties is the most essential part of the philosophy of life. If you escape duty you avoid action. The world demands results.

We must guard against becoming so engrossed in the specific nature of the roots and bark of the trees of knowledge as to miss the meaning and grandeur of the forest they compose.

A GREAT discovery solves a great problem but there is a grain of discovery in any problem.

The principle is so perfectly general that no particular application of it is possible.

Neither of us can come to either a knowledge of God, or a denial of God by our scientific research.

In the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises, and even pastimes for children; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world's culture delineated in faint outline.

I've seen Dempsey fight and I was impressed with his lack of knowledge.

To know all, it is necessary to know very little; but to know that very little, one must first know pretty much.

Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others. Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart.

Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are, and so makes its theory more popular and convincing.

Every extension of knowledge arises from making the conscious the unconscious.

Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong.

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.

Never any knowledge was delivered in the same order it was invented.

I work for posterity, these things requiring ages for their accomplishment.

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else.

Human beings of all societies in all periods of history believe that their ideas on the nature of the real world are the most secure, and that their ideas on religion, ethics and justice are the most enlightened. Like us, they think that final knowledge is at last within reach. Like us, they pity the people in earlier ages for not knowing the true facts. Unfailingly, human beings pity their ancestors for being so ignorant and forget that their descendants will pity them for the same reason.

Books and newspapers assume a "common reader" that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the culture. Obviously, such assumptions are never identical from writer to writer, but they show a remarkable consistency

Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea?

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer's own; and the mind which would bring this secret gem to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

We do not want our world to perish. But in our quest for knowledge, century by century, we have placed all our trust in a cold, impartial intellect which only brings us nearer to destruction.