Knowledge Quotes - Page 29

• I have been asked whether I would agree that the tragedy of the scientist is that he is able to bring about great advances in our knowledge, which mankind may then proceed to use for purposes of destruction. My answer is that this is not the tragedy of the scientist; it is the tragedy of mankind.

  Leo Szilard

  Science, Tragedy, Progress

  69 Copy quote

• I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens out on our West Coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about.

  Ronald Reagan

  Funny, Science, Years

  56 Copy quote

• I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to conviction, in common I believe with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin; or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one into another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.

  Michael Faraday

  Believe, Science, Long

  Bence Jones, Michael Faraday (2010). “The Life and Letters of Faraday”, p.195, Cambridge University Press

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have never seen the Philosopher's Stone that turns lead into Gold, but I have known the pursuit of it turn a Man's Gold into Lead.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Science, Men, Gold

  Benjamin Franklin (2008). “The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac”, p.24, Nayika Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics.

  Max Born

  Philosophy, Science, Thinking

  54 Copy quote

• I think the next [21st] century will be the century of complexity. We have already discovered the basic laws that govern matter and understand all the normal situations. We don't know how the laws fit together, and what happens under extreme conditions. But I expect we will find a complete unified theory sometime this century. The is no limit to the complexity that we can build using those basic laws.

  Stephen Hawking

  Science, Thinking, Law

  16 Copy quote

• I trust and believe that the time spent in this voyage ... will produce its full worth in Natural History; and it appears to me the doing what little we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue.

  Charles Darwin

  Believe, Science, Littles

  Charles Darwin (1902). “Charles Darwin: His Life in an Autobiographical Chapter and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters”, p.267, Library of Alexandria

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I go out into nature, into the unknown, to the fringes of knowledge, everything seems mixed up and contradictory, illogical, and incoherent. This is what research does; it smooths out contradictions and makes things simple, logical, and coherent.

  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

  Science, Simple, Simplicity

  8 Copy quote

• If the term education may be understood in so large a sense as to include all that belongs to the improvement of the mind, either by the acquisition of the knowledge of others or by increase of it through its own exertions, we learn by them what is the kind of education science offers to man. It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing - not to despise the small beginnings, for they precede of necessity all great things in the knowledge of science, either pure or applied.

  Michael Faraday

  Science, Men, Mind

  20 Copy quote

• If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order intrinsically indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind through the steps traversed by the general mind. But the order is not intrinsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental reason why education should be a repetition of civilization in little.

  Herbert Spencer

  Children, Science, Order

  Herbert Spencer (1914). “Essays on education and kindred subjects Repr”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we are to define science, ... it does not consist so much in knowing, nor even in "organized knowledge," as it does in diligent inquiry into truth for truth's sake, without any sort of axe to grind, nor for the sake of the delight of contemplating it, but from an impulse to penetrate into the reason of things.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Science, Knowing, Doe

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers”, p.19, Harvard University Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• In my own view, some advice about what should be known, about what technical education should be acquired, about the intense motivation needed to succeed, and about the carelessness and inclination toward bias that must be avoided is far more useful than all the rules and warnings of theoretical logic.

  Santiago Ramon y Cajal

  Motivation, Science, Views

  31 Copy quote

• In physics we deal with states of affairs much simpler than those of psychology and yet we again and again learn that our task is not to investigate the essence of things-we do not at all know what this would mean&mash;but to develop those concepts that allow us to speak with each other about the events of nature in a fruitful manner.

  Niels Bohr

  Mean, Science, Essence

  8 Copy quote

• Inductive inference is the only process known to us by which essentially new knowledge comes into the world.

  Ronald Fisher

  Science, World, Inference

  9 Copy quote

• It is a right, yes a duty, to search in cautious manner for the numbers, sizes, and weights, the norms for everything [God] has created. For He himself has let man take part in the knowledge of these things ... For these secrets are not of the kind whose research should be forbidden; rather they are set before our eyes like a mirror so that by examining them we observe to some extent the goodness and wisdom of the Creator.

  Johannes Kepler

  Eye, Science, Men

  95 Copy quote

• It is better to have a few forms well known than to teach a little about many hundred species. Better a dozen specimens thoroughly studied as the result of the first year's work, than to have two thousand dollars' worth of shells and corals bought from a curiosity-shop. The dozen animals would be your own.

  Louis Agassiz

  Teaching, Science, Animal

  7 Copy quote

• It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when we find they do not fit and draw new ones.

  John Steinbeck

  Children, Science, Knowing

  John Steinbeck (1943). “Steinbeck”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not knowing, but the love of learning, that characterizes the scientific man.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Science, Men, Knowing

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers”, p.20, Harvard University Press

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again; the never-satisfied man is so strange if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully,but in order to begin another. I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretches out his arms for others.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Learning, Science, Men

  36 Copy quote

• It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance.

  Lewis Thomas

  Ignorance, Science, Reality

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.

  Jean Rostand

  Science, Important, Sometimes

  Jean Rostand (1962). “The substance of man”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may bother those in power; we are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible, and which are not.

  Carl Sagan

  Smart, Responsibility, Science

  12 Copy quote

• It may be said "In research, if you know what you are doing, then you shouldn't be doing it." In a sense, if the answer turns out to be exactly what you expected, then you have learned nothing new, although you may have had your confidence increased somewhat.

  Richard Hamming

  Learning, Science, Research

  Richard W. Hamming, Richard Wesley Hamming (1973). “Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers”, p.704, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It must be conceded that a theory has an important advantage if its basic concepts and fundamental hypotheses are 'close to experience,' and greater confidence in such a theory is certainly justified. There is less danger of going completely astray, particularly since it takes so much less time and effort to disprove such theories by experience. Yet more and more, as the depth of our knowledge increases, we must give up this advantage in our quest for logical simplicity in the foundations of physical theory.

  Albert Einstein

  Giving Up, Science, Simplicity

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.349, Broadway Books

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It seems to me, that the only Objects of the abstract Sciences or of Demonstration is Quantity and Number, and that all Attempts to extend this more perfect Species of Knowledge beyond these Bounds are mere Sophistry and Illusion.

  David Hume

  Science, Numbers, Perfect

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.1066, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source