Desire For Knowledge Quotes

• All men by nature desire knowledge.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Education, Learning

  "Metaphysics". Book by Aristotle. Book I, 980a.21,

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  Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

  Plato

  Plato, Desire, Three

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• The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.

  Claude Bernard

  Science, Men, Discovery

  Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.239, Courier Corporation

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• Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.

  Will Durant

  Education, Knowledge, Eye

  Will Durant (2012). “Story of Philosophy”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

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• The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

  Laurence Sterne

  Motivational, Education, Business

  Laurence Sterne (1849). “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”, p.65

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• The desire for knowledge shapes a man.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Men, Desire, Shapes

  Patrick Rothfuss (2011). “The Wise Man's Fear: The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day Two”, p.118, Penguin

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• The starting point of all achievement is desire.

  Napoleon Hill

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

  Napoleon Hill (2007). “The Prosperity Bible: The Greatest Writings of All Time on the Secrets to Wealth and Prosperity”, p.142, Penguin

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• A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

  Ayn Rand

  Motivational, Dance, Teamwork

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.99, Penguin

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• It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Knowledge, Science, Heaven

  Frankenstein ch. 2 (1818)

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• [Science is] the desire to know causes.

  William Hazlitt

  Science, Desire, Causes

  1829 In The Atlas, 15 Feb.

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• The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

  William Hazlitt

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  1829 In The Atlas, 15 Feb.

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• Humanities deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for continuing our quest. and our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.

  Stephen Hawking

  Goal, Humanity, Desire

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• Once a man criticized my desire for knowledge by saying that it was not fitting for a woman to possess learning because there was so little of it. I replied that it was even less fitting for a man to possess ignorance because there was so much of it.

  Christine de Pizan

  Ignorance, Men, Desire

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• The tiny, initial clue ... by allowing us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge.

  Marcel Proust

  Knowledge, Desire, Tiny

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.236, Wordsworth Editions

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• And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore.

  Apsley Cherry-Garrard

  Expression, Giving, Desire

  Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1937). “The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913”, p.542, Library of Alexandria

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• The presentations and conceptions of the average man of the world are formed and dominated, not by the full and pure desire for knowledge as an end in itself, but by the struggle to adapt himself favourably to the conditions of life.

  Ernst Mach

  Struggle, Men, Average

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• Man did not address his inquiries to the earth on which he stood until a remarkably late stage in the development of his desire for knowledge. And the answers he received to the questions, "Where do I come from?", "What is man?", although they made him poorer by a few illusions, gave him in compensation a knowledge of his past that is vaster than he could ever have dreamed. For it emerged that the history of life was his history too.

  Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald

  Men, Past, Desire

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• There are certain things that our age needs, and certain things that it should avoid. It needs compassion and a wish that mankind should be happy; it needs the desire for knowledge and the determination to eschew pleasant myths; it needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Faith, Determination, Compassion

  Bertrand Russell (1998). “Autobiography”, p.520, Psychology Press

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• Wonder [admiratio astonishment, marvel] is a kind of desire for knowledge. The situation arises when one sees an effect and does not know its cause, or when the cause of the particular effect is one that exceeds his power of understanding. Hence, wonder is a cause of pleasure insofar as there is annexed the hope of attaining understanding of that which one wants to know. ... For desire is especially aroused by the awareness of ignorance, and consequently a man takes the greatest pleasure in those things which he discovers for himself or learns from the ground up.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

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• [I]t was with a good end in mind – that of acquiring the knowledge of good and evil – that Eve allowed herself to be carried away and eat the forbidden fruit. But Adam was not moved by this desire for knowledge, but simply by greed: he ate it because he heard Eve say it tasted good.

  Moderata Fonte

  Evil, Greed, Mind

  Moderata (Modesta Pozzo) Fonte (2007). “The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men”, p.94, University of Chicago Press

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• Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.

  Stephen Hawking

  Order, Civilization, People

  Stephen W. Hawking (1990). “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes”, Bantam

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• Kant ... was also quite aware that "the urgent need" of reason is both different from and "more than mere quest and desire for knowledge." Hence, the distinguishing of the two faculties, reason and intellect, coincides with a distinction between two altogether different mental activities, thinking and knowing.

  Hannah Arendt

  Thinking, Two, Knowing

  Hannah Arendt (1981). “The Life of the Mind”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Wonder is defined by Thomas [Aquinas] in the Summa Theologiae [I-II, Q. 32, a. 8], as the desiderium sciendi, the desire for knowledge, active longing to know.

  Josef Pieper

  Desire, Wonder, Longing

  "Leisure, the Basis of Culture" by Josef Pieper, translated by Gerald Malsbary, South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, (pp. 106-107), 1998.

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• Man seeks to learn, and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society; he does not kill himself because of his learning. It is certainly not the learning he acquires that disorganizes religion; but the desire for knowledge wakens because religion becomes disorganized.

  Emile Durkheim

  Religious, Loss, Men

  W. S. F. Pickering, Emile Durkheim (2011). “Durkheim on Religion: A Selection of Readings with Bibliographies and Introductory Remarks”, p.55, Casemate Publishers

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• I began the study of medicine, impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.

  Karl Jaspers

  Men, Medicine, Long

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