Knowledge Quotes - Page 28

• Do you realize we've got 250 million years of coal? But coal has got environmental hazards to it, but there's-I'm convinced, and I know that we-technology can be developed so we can have zero-emissions coal-fired electricity plants.

  George W. Bush

  Zero, Science, Technology

  7 Copy quote

• During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Men, Fields

  Isaac Asimov (1968). “The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Physical Sciences”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are ... rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Science, Light, Dust

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.419, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding, can expect only to improve a single science. In every other part of learning, they must be content to follow opinions, which they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they claim as peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times, the collective labour of a thousand intellects.

  Samuel Johnson

  Science, Understanding, Add

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.199, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every student who enters upon a scientific pursuit, especially if at a somewhat advanced period of life, will find not only that he has much to learn, but much also to unlearn.

  John Herschel

  Science, Students, Pursuit

  Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1869). “Outlines of Astronomy”, p.17

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism.

  Francis Crick

  Science, Enemy, Knows

  6 Copy quote

• Experimentation is the least arrogant method of gaining knowledge. The experimenter humbly asks a question of nature.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Arrogance, Arrogant

  4 Copy quote

• Facts, and facts alone, are the foundation of science... When one devotes oneself to experimental research it is in order to augment the sum of known facts, or to discover their mutual relations.

  Francois Magendie

  Science, Order, Facts

  6 Copy quote

• First, In showing in how to avoid attempting impossibilities. Second, In securing us from important mistakes in attempting what is, in itself possible, by means either inadequate or actually opposed to the end in view. Thirdly, In enabling us to accomplish our ends in the easiest, shortest, most economical, and most effectual manner. Fourth, In inducing us to attempt, and enabling us to accomplish, object which, but for such knowledge, we should never have thought of understanding.
  On the ways that a knowledge of the order of nature can be of use.

  John Herschel

  Mistake, Mean, Science

  8 Copy quote

• For [Richard] Feynman, the essence of the scientific imagination was a powerful and almost painful rule. What scientists create must match reality. It must match what is already known. Scientific creativity is imagination in a straitjacket.

  James Gleick

  Powerful, Creativity, Science

  James Gleick (2011). “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman”, p.509, Open Road Media

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• From the freedom to explore comes the joy of learning. From knowledge acquired by personal initiative arises the desire for more knowledge. And from mastery of the novel and beautiful world awaiting every child comes self-confidence.

  E. O. Wilson

  Beautiful, Freedom, Children

  8 Copy quote

• Great healers, people of divine realization, do not cure by chance but by exact knowledge.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Science, People, Realization

  9 Copy quote

• Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge and of the investigation of the depths of qualities and things.

  Walt Whitman

  Faith, Science, Quality

  Walt Whitman (2012). “Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition”, p.12, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Groups do not have experiences except insofar as all their members do. And there are no experiences... that all the members of a scientific community must share in the course of a [scientific] revolution. Revolutions should be described not in terms of group experience but in terms of the varied experiences of individual group members. Indeed, that variety itself turns out to play an essential role in the evolution of scientific knowledge.

  Thomas Kuhn

  Science, Play, Community

  Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Thomas S. Kuhn (1989). “Die Wissenschafts Philosophie Thomas S. Kuhns: Rekonstruktion und Grundlagenprobleme”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• He that in ye mine of knowledge deepest diggeth, hath, like every other miner, ye least breathing time, and must sometimes at least come to terr. alt. for air.

  Isaac Newton

  Time, Science, Air

  8 Copy quote

• His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle.

  Nikola Tesla

  Sorry, Book, Learning

  29 Copy quote

• 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

  Science, Causes, Contemplation

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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I also maintain that clear knowledge of natural science must be acquired, in the first instance, through mastery of medicine alone.

  Hippocrates

  Science, Medicine, Firsts

  11 Copy quote

• I am almost thanking God that I was never educated, for it seems to me that 999 of those who are so, expensively and laboriously, have lost all before they arrive at my age-& remain like Swift's Stulbruggs-cut and dry for life, making no use of their earlier-gained treasures:-whereas, I seem to be on the threshold of knowledge.

  Edward Lear

  Science, Cutting, Thank God

  L. Candace Pezzera, Edward Lear, Rhode Island School of Design. Museum of Art (1982). “How pleasant to know Mr. Lear: watercolors by Edward Lear from Rhode Island collections”

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am convinced that it is impossible to expound the methods of induction in a sound manner, without resting them upon the theory of probability. Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowledge - knowledge mingled with ignorance, producing doubt.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Ignorance, Science, Perfect

  "The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I await your sentence with less fear than you pass it. The time will come when all will see what I see.

  Giordano Bruno

  Science, Sentences, Knows

  31 Copy quote

• I called it ignose, not knowing which carbohydrate it was. This name was turned down by my editor. 'God-nose' was not more successful, so in the end 'hexuronic acid' was agreed upon. To-day the substance is called 'ascorbic acid' and I will use this name.

  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

  Success, Science, Editors

  4 Copy quote

• I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

  Bertrand Russell

  Lying, Science, Decision

  Bertrand Russell (1997). “Religion and Science”, p.243, Oxford University Press, USA

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

  Francis Bacon

  Taken, Science, Ends

  Francis Bacon, Basil Montagu (1834). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England: A New Edition:”, p.274

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge in innumerable spheres and enjoyed it as an always ready instrument for exercising the mind and penetrating further and further. Best of all, mine has been a life of loving and being loved. What a tragedy that all this will disappear with the used-up body!

  Richard Goldschmidt

  Exercise, Science, Mind

  7 Copy quote