Knowledge Quotes - Page 30

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

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Science, Heaven, Secret

  Frankenstein ch. 2 (1818)

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• Knowledge falters when imagination clips its wings or fears to use them.

  John Dewey

  Science, Wings, Imagination

  William James, John Dewey, John M. Capps, Donald Capps (2005). “James and Dewey on Belief and Experience”, p.212, University of Illinois Press

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• Learn the leading precognita of all things-no need to turn over leaf by leaf, but grasp the trunk hard and you will shake all the branches.
  Advice cherished by Samuel Johnson that that, if one is to master any subject, one must first discover its general principles.

  Samuel Johnson

  Advice, Principles, Needs

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• Man has an intense desire for assured knowledge.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Men, Desire

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.22, Broadway Books

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• Men will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences. Science will go on whether we are pessimistic or optimistic, as I am. More interesting discoveries than we can imagine will be made, and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm.

  Linus Pauling

  Optimistic, Science, Men

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• Modern physics has changed nothing in the great classical disciplines of, for instance, mechanics, optics, and heat. Only the conception of hitherto unexplored regions, formed prematurely from a knowledge of only certain parts of the world, has undergone a decisive transformation. This conception, however, is always decisive for the future course of research.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Science, Discipline, Research

  Werner Heisenberg (1979). “Philosophical problems of quantum physics”, Ox Bow Pr

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• I should say that the useful results of science had accumulated, but that there had been no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity; for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Science, Men, Progress

  "Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature".

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• Nature's economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics.

  Carl Linnaeus

  Science, Economy, Mathematics

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• Necessity is not the mother of invention. Knowledge and experiment are its parents. It sometimes happens that successful search is made for unknown materials to fill well-recognized and predetermined requirements. It more often happens that the acquirement of knowledge of the previously unknown properties of a material suggests its trial for some new use. These facts strongly indicate the value of knowledge of properties of materials and indicate a way for research.

  Willis R. Whitney

  Success, Mother, Science

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

  Francis Bacon

  Science, Order, Knows

  Francis Bacon (1778). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England: In Five Volumes”, p.392

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• No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Passion, Science, Men

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

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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

  Science, Understanding, Mind

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

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• Nobody knows how the stand of our knowledge about the atom would be without him. Personally, [Niels] Bohr is one of the amiable colleagues I have met. He utters his opinions like one perpetually groping and never like one who believes himself to be in possession of the truth.

  Albert Einstein

  Believe, Science, Atoms

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• Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Children, Science, Past

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• Nothing is really small; whoever is open to the deep penetration of nature knows this.

  Victor Hugo

  Science, Penetration, Knows

  Victor Hugo (2000). “Les Mis??rables”, p.766, Modern Library

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• Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument.

  Humphry Davy

  Science, Advancement, Instruments

  Sir Humphry Davy (1812). “Elements of Chemical Philosophy”, p.54

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• Now, in the development of our knowledge of the workings of Nature out of the tremendously complex assemblage of phenomena presented to the scientific inquirer, mathematics plays in some respects a very limited, in others a very important part. As regards the limitations, it is merely necessary to refer to the sciences connected with living matter, and to the ologies generally, to see that the facts and their connections are too indistinctly known to render mathematical analysis practicable, to say nothing of the complexity.

  Oliver Heaviside

  Nature, Science, Play

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• Of power does Man possess no particle: Of knowledge-just so much as show that still It ends in ignorance on every side.

  Robert Browning

  Ignorance, Science, Men

  Robert Browning (2008). “The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, La Saisiaz, Etc.”, p.334, Wildside Press LLC

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• One and all
  We lend an ear-nay, Science takes thereto-
  Encourages the meanest who has racked
  Nature until he gains from her some fact,
  To state what truth is from his point of view,
  Mere pin-point though it be: since many such
  Conduce to make a whole, she bids our friend
  Come forward unabashed and haply lend
  His little life-experience to our much
  Of modern knowledge.

  Robert Browning

  Science, Views, Littles

  Robert Browning (2008). “The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, La Saisiaz, Etc.”, p.334, Wildside Press LLC

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• One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.

  Simon Newcomb

  Science, Simple, Discovery

  Simon Newcomb (1903). “The reminiscences of an astronomer”, Harper and Brothers

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• One of the great problems of philosophy, is the relationship between the realm of knowledge and the realm of values. Knowledge is what is; values are what ought to be. I would say that all traditional philosophies up to and including Marxism have tried to derive the "ought" from the "is." My point of view is that this is impossible, this is a farce.

  Jacques Monod

  Philosophy, Science, Views

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• Only to often on meeting scientific men, even those of genuine distiction, one finds that they are dull fellows and very stupid. They know one thing to excess; they know nothing else. Pursuing facts too doggedly and unimaginatively, they miss all the charming things that are not facts. ... Too much learning, like too little learning, is an unpleasant and dangerous thing.

  H. L. Mencken

  Stupid, Science, Men

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• Our confused wish finds expression in the confused question as to the nature of force and electricity. But the answer which we want is not really an answer to this question. It is not by finding out more and fresh relations and connections that it can be answered; but by removing the contradictions existing between those already known, and thus perhaps by reducing their number. When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.

  Heinrich Hertz

  Nature, Confused, Science

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• Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts).

  Immanuel Kant

  Spring, Science, Two

  Immanuel Kant (2013). “Immanuel Kant's Critique Of Pure Reason”, p.61, Read Books Ltd

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• Philosophy is that part of science which at present people chose to have opinions about, but which they have no knowledge about. Therefore every advance in knowledge robs philosophy of some problems which formerly it had ...and will belong to science.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Science, People

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism”, p.124, Routledge

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