Human Knowledge Quotes

• Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.

  Kofi Annan

  Education, Knowledge, Information Is Power

  Kofi Atta Annan (1998). “The quotable Kofi Annan: selections from speeches and statements by the Secretary-General”, United Nations

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

  Plato

  Plato, Desire, Three

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• Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

  Jimmy Wales

  Business, Internet Access, World

  "Wikipedia At 15: The Struggle To Attract Non-Techy Geeks". Interview with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. January 15, 2016.

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• Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

  Albert Einstein

  Funny, Hilarious, Education

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.32, St. Martin's Press

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• I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

  John F. Kennedy

  Knowledge, Science, Thinking

  Remarks at dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere, Washington, D.C., 29 Apr. 1962

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• We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Drinking, Knowledge

  "A Mencken chrestomathy". Book by Henry Louis Mencken, 1949.

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• No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

  Francis Bacon

  Knowledge, Science, Understanding

  Francis Bacon (2012). “The Great Instauration”, p.63, Simon and Schuster

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• To express the same idea in still another way, I think that human knowledge is essentially active.

  Jean Piaget

  Thinking, Ideas, Way

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• Every branch of human knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery.

  Arthur Machen

  Principles, Finals, Branches

  Arthur Machen (2015). “The Novel of the White Powder”, p.16, Booklassic

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• This means that no single logic is strong enough to support the total construction of human knowledge.

  Jean Piaget

  Strong, Mean, Support

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• Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Phones, Gateways, Should

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• I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Inability, Details, Development

  Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin “The Selected Works of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin”, Library of Alexandria

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• But inner experience is only one source of human knowledge.

  Muhammad Iqbal

  Source, Humans

  Sir Muhammad Iqbal (2000). “The religious thought in Islam”

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• Human knowledge has been changing from the word go and people in certain respects behave more rationally than they did when they didn't have it. They spend less time doing rain dances and more time seeding clouds.

  Herbert Simon

  Rain, Clouds, People

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• All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

  Walter Benjamin

  Intelligence, Form, Interpretation

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• 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.

  Francis Bacon

  Knowledge, Science, Causes

  Francis Bacon, Rose-Mary Sargent (1999). “Selected Philosophical Works”, p.90, Hackett Publishing

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• Human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth.

  Albert Einstein

  Skills, Humanity, Opening Your Mind

  Albert Einstein (2013). “Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives”, p.70, Princeton University Press

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• Human knowledge is dark and uncertain; philosophy is dark, astrology is dark, and geometry is dark.

  John Jewel

  Philosophy, Dark, Astrology

  John Jewel (1848). “The Works of John Jewel, D.D., Bishop of Salisbury”, p.323

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• Those who want to row on the ocean of human knowledge do not get far, and the storm drives those out of their course who set sail.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Inspirational, Funny, Ocean

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• Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp, for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing.

  Cory Doctorow

  World, Firsts, First Time

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• In a world in which the total of human knowledge is doubling about every ten years, our security can rest only on our ability to learn

  Nathaniel Branden

  Learning, Years, World

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• These long chains of perfectly simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers are accustomed to carry out their most difficult demonstrations had led me to fancy that everything that can fall under human knowledge forms a similar sequence; and that so long as we avoid accepting as true what is not so, and always preserve the right order of deduction of one thing from another, there can be nothing too remote to be reached in the end, or to well hidden to be discovered.

  Rene Descartes

  Fall, Mean, Math

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• Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Lying, Ignorance, Deeper

  Charles Caleb COLTON (1849). “L.P.”, p.480

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• Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Sorry, Nice, Science

  1783 Letter to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, 27 Jul.

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• Most books are about aspects of human knowledge - Few people write books about human ignorance, despite the fact that there would be much more to write about

  Piero Scaruffi

  Inspirational, Book, Writing

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