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  • All men naturally desire knowledge.

    -Aristotle
    Metaphysics, bk.1, ch.1, 980a (translated by H  Tredennick).

  • Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask:Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

    - Matthew Arnold
      The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems,'Shakespeare'.

  • Of these two literatures [French and German], as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years, has beena critical effort; the endeavours, in all branches of knowledgetheology, philosophy, history, art, sciencetoseethe object as initself it really is.

    - Matthew Arnold
    On Translating Homer, lecture 2.

  • Oh! it is onlya novel!†only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineationof itsvarieties,theliveliesteffusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

    -Jane Austen
      Northanger Abbey, ch.5.

  • It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychologyand sociology.

    - SirAlfred Jules Ayer
      Language, Truth and Logic, ch.6.

  • I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Letter to Lord Burghley.

  • Knowledge is power

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Meditationes sacrae,'De Haresibus' (Of Heresies).

  • For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      The Advancement of Learning, bk.1, ch.1, section 3.

  • The knowledge of man is as the waters, some descending from above, and some springing from beneath; the one informed by the light of nature, the other inspired by divine revelation.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      The Advancement of Learning, bk.2, ch.5, section1.

  • Of knowledge there is no satiety.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      The Advancement of Learning, bk.2.

  • The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      New Atlantis (published posthumously,1627).

  • If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.32,'Of Discourse'.

  • The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Of Solomon's House, the centre of Bacon's scientific utopia. New Atlantis (published1627).

  • There are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

    - Roger known as Doctor Mirabilis Bacon
      Opus Majus (translated by Robert Belle Burke,1928).

  • Amer savoir, celui qu'on tire du voyage! Bitter is the knowledge gained in travelling.

    - Charles Baudelaire
      Les Fleurs du mal,'Le Voyage'.

  •    I am inclined tothink that the fargreater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to ourselvesthat we have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.

    - George Berkeley
      A  Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, introduction.

  • Therefore doth Job open his mouth in vain; he multiplieth words without knowledge.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job 35:16.

  • Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job 38:2^4.

  • O L, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo,O L, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDORDPsalms139:1^6.

  • For inmuchwisdomismuchgrief: and hethat increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes1:18.

  • Whatsoever thy hand findethto do; do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes 9:10.

  •    And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as thestarsforeverand ever.Butthou,ODaniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Daniel12:3^4.

  • Woeuntoyou, lawyers! for yehavetakenaway thekeyof knowledge.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Luke11:52.

  •    Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and havenotcharity,Iam becomeassounding brass, ora tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all mygoodstofeed thepoor, and though Igivemy body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not herown, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Corinthians13:1^13.

  • That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Ephesians 3:16^19.

  • Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks, without knowledge, of things without parallel.

    - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
      The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

  • The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keepyourheartsandmindsintheknowledgeand love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord: And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you and remain with you always. Amen.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Holy Communion, Blessing.

  • Such knowledge istoo wonderful and excellent for me: I cannot attain unto it.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Psalm139:5.

  • Once regarded as the herald of enlightenment in all spheres of knowledge, science is now increasingly seen as a strictly instrumental system of control. Its use as a system of manipulation and its role in restricting human freedomnow parallel in everydetail itsuseas a means of natural manipulation.

    - Murray pseudonym of  Lewis Herber Bookchin
      The Ecology of Freedom.

  • I reflected how easy it is for a man to reduce women of a certain age to imbecility. All he has to do isgive an impersonation of desire, or better still, of secret knowledge, for a woman to feel herself a source of power.

    - Anita Brookner
      A Family Romance, ch.7.

  • The quincunx of heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five parts of knowledge.

    - SirThomas Browne
      The Garden of Cyrus, ch.5.

  • For I say, this is death and the sole death, When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest.

    - Robert Browning
      Dramatis Personae,'A Death in the Desert'.

  • Science is knowledge arranged and classified according to truth, facts, and the general laws of nature.

    - Luther Burbank
      Interview in the San Francisco Bulletin, 22  Jan.

  • Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that isthe essence of ourbeing.None candefine its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.

    -Vannevar Bush
      Science is Not Enough.

  • The very knowledge that he lived in vain, That all was over on this side the tomb, Had made Despair a smilingness assume.

    -Rochdale
    ^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza16.

  • Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, The tree of knowledge is not that of Life.

    -Rochdale
      Manfred, act1, sc.1.

  • He thought about himself, and the whole earth, Of man the wonderful, and of the stars, And how the deuce they ever could have birth; And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars, How many miles the moon might have in girth, Of air-balloons, and of the many bars To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies; And then he thought of Donna Julia's eyes.

    -Rochdale
    ^24  Don Juan, canto1, stanza 92.

  • But sweeter still than this, than these, than all, Is first and passionate loveit stands alone, Like Adam's recollection of his fall; The tree of knowledge hath been pluck'dall's known And life yields nothing further to recall Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown, No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven Fire which Prometheus filch'd for us from heaven.

    -Rochdale
    ^24  Don Juan, canto1, stanza127.

  • For, strictly considered, what is all knowledge too but recorded experience, and a product of history; of which, therefore, reasoning and belief, no less than action and passion are essential materials?

    -Thomas Carlyle
      Critical and Miscellaneous Essays,'History'.

  • It wasn't exactly carelessness; her knowledge of literate English contained such vast areas of desert that she took it for granted that half of what she wrote would be meaningless to her.

    - Raymond Chandler
      On the shortcomings of his ex-secretary. Letter to Erle Stanley Gardner,1  Jul.

  • The chapter of knowledge is very short, but the chapter of accidents is a very long one.

    - Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
      Letter to Solomon Dayrolles,16 Feb.

  • Grace isgiven of God, but knowledge is bought in the market.

    - Arthur Hugh Clough
      The Bothie of  Tober-na-Vuolich, pt.4, l.159.

  • Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

    -William Cowper
      The Task, bk.6,'The Winter  Walk at Noon', l.89^91.

  • Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

    -William Cowper
      The Task, bk.6,'The Winter  Walk at Noon', l.96^7.

  • Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

    - e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings cummings
      'Jottings', in Wake, no.10.

  • The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you'll grow out of it.

    - Doris originally Doris Kappelhoff Day
    Quoted in  A E Hotchner Doris Day (1978).

  • Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance?

    - SirJohn Denham
      Cooper's Hill, l.145^6.

  •    Books, we are told, propose to instruct or to amuse. Indeed!† The true antithesisto knowledge, in this case, is not pleasure, but power. All that is literature seeks to communicate power; all that is not literature, to communicate knowledge.

    -Johnny (John Christopher) Depp
      Letters to aYoungMan whose Education has been Neglected, no.3, in the London Magazine,  Jan^  Jul.

  • How imperfect is all our knowledge!

    -John Donne
      Sermon preached at the funeral of Sir  William Cockayne, 12 Dec.

  • And if there be any addition to knowledge, it is rather a new knowledge than a greater knowledge; rather a singularity in a desire of proposing something that was not knownat all beforethananimproving, anadvancing, a multiplying of former inceptions; and by that means, no knowledge comes to be perfect.

    -John Donne
      Sermon preached at the funeral of Sir  William Cockayne, 12 Dec.

  • I ask you to look both ways.For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.

    - SirArthur Stanley Eddington
      Stars and  Atoms, lecture1.

  •    What a misfortune it isto be bornawoman!† Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show usthenew limits, the Gothic structure, theimpenetrable barriers of our prison.

    - Maria Edgeworth
      Leonora, letter1.

  • The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which ourdull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive formsthis knowledge, this feeling, isatthe centerof true religiousness.In thissense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.

    - Albert Einstein
    Quoted in Philipp Frank Einstein: HisLife and Times (1947), ch.12, section 5.

  • After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now Eliot History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'Gerontion'.

  • Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      The Rock, pt.1.

  • There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.2.

  • Whatever Nature has instore for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignoranceisnever better than knowledge.

    - Enrico Fermi
    Quoted in Laura Fermi  Atoms in the Family (1954).

  • Furnished as all Europe is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experimentation, 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 since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.

    - Anne Frank
      Letter to Sir  Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, 27  Jul.

  • The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.

    - Sigmund Freud
      The Future of an Illusion.

  • The knowledge that you can have is inexhaustible, and what is inexhaustible is benevolent. The knowledge that you cannot have is of the riddles of birth and death, of our future destinyand the purposes of God. Here there is no knowledge, but illusions that restrict freedom and limit hope. Accept the mystery behind knowledge: It is not darkness but shadow.

    - Northrop Frye
       Address, Metropolitan United Church, Toronto,10  Apr, quoted by Alexandra  Johnston in Vic Report, spring1991.

  • The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowlyand deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius.Theresulting performance, though lessinspiring, is far more predictable.

    -John Kenneth Galbraith
      The New Industrial State.

  • Science is the only truth and it is the great lie. It knows nothing, and people think it knows everything. It is misrepresented. People think that science is electricity, automobilism, and dirigible balloons. It is something very different. It is life devouring itself. It is the sensibility transformed into intelligence. It is the need to know stifling the need to live. It is the genius of knowledge vivisecting the vital genius.

    - Re  my de Gourmont
      Promenades philosophiques (translated by Glen S Burne, 1966).

  • But knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul.

    -Thomas Gray
    Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.49^52.

  • The mathematical is that evident aspect of things within which we are always already moving and according to which we experience them as things at all, and as such things. The mathematical is this fundamental position we take toward things by which we take up things as already given to us, and as they must and should be given. Therefore, the mathematical is the fundamental presupposition of the knowledge of things.

    - Martin Heidegger
    'Modern Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics', collected in Basic Writings (1977).

  •    Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

    -Hippocrates   c.460
    The Canon, vol. 4 (translated by  John Chadwick).

  • Talk about those subjects you have had long in your mind, and listen to what others say about subjects you have studied but recently. Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.

    - Oliver Wendell Holmes
    ^8  The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ch.6.

  • It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

    - Oliver Wendell Holmes
      The Poet at the Breakfast  Table, ch.10.

  • Dewey has no inner reserve of knowledge on which to draw for his thinking. A man couldn't wear a moustache like that without having it affect his mind.

    - Herbert Clark Hoover
    Quoted in Richard Norton Smith  An Uncommon Man (1984).

  • Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that man is in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech whereby†he has slowlyaccumulated and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of individual life in other animals; so that he now stands raised above it as on a mountain-top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.

    -T(homas) H(enry) Huxley
      Man's Place in Nature.

  •    Knowledge is oftwo kinds.We knowa subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark,18  Apr. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • There is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all TomJones.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark, 6  Apr. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • Asthe Spanishproverbsays,'He, whowould bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.' So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark,17  Apr. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.3.

  • If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.

    - Erica ne  e Mann Jong
      'The  Artist  as Housewife', in The First Ms. Reader.

  • DerVerstand vermag nichts anzuschauen, und die Sinne nichts zu denken. Nur daraus, dass sie sich vereinigen, kann Erkenntnis entspringen. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing.Only through their union can knowledge arise.

    - Immanuel Kant
    Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason), B75 (translated by N Kemp Smith).

  • Ich habe also demnach keine Erkenntnis von mir, wie ich bin, sondern bloÞ, wie ich mir selbst erscheine. Das Bewusstsein seiner selbst ist also noch lange nicht eine Erkenntnis seiner selbst. I have no knowledge of myself as I am but merely as I appear to myself. The consciousness of myself is thus very far from being a knowledge of the self.

    - Immanuel Kant
    Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason), B158 (translated by N Kemp Smith).

  • Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen. I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.

    - Immanuel Kant
      Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason), preface to 2nd edn (translated by N Kemp Smith).

  • And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, And she forgot the blue above the trees, And she forgot the dells where waters run, And she forgot the chillyautumn breeze; She had no knowledge when the day was done, And the new morn she saw not: but in peace Hung over her sweet Basil evermore, And moistened it with tears unto the core.

    -John Keats
      Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems, 'Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil', stanza 53.

  • This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered in the White Housewith the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

    -John F(itzgerald) Kennedy
       Address at a dinner for 49 Nobel laureates, 29  Apr.

  •    Not Eve, whose fault was only too much love, Which made her give this present to her dear, That what she tasted he likewise might prove, Whereby his knowledge might become more clear; He never sought her weakness to reprove With those sharp words which he of God did hear; Yet men will boast of knowledge, which he took From Eve's fair hand, as from a learned book.

    - Aemilia Lanyer
    Salve Deus Ex Judaeorum,'Eve's  Apology in Defense of Women'.

  • The painter who draws by practiceand judgement of the eye without the use of reason is like a mirror which copies everything placed in front of it without knowledge of the same.

    -Leonardo daVinci
    Quoted in Irma  A Richter (ed) Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1977).

  • It is ambition enough to be employed as an under- labourer in clearing ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge. 514

    -John Locke
      Essay Concerning Human Understanding,'Epistle to the Reader'.

  • Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busyand boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.

    -John Locke
      Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk.2, pt.1, section 2.

  • Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.

    -1st Baron
      'History' in the Edinburgh Review, May.

  •    The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.

    -Joseph MacInnis
    Quoted by Donald Grant in The Globe and Mail, 8 Nov1986.

  • Dass nicht alles auf einmal da ist, bleibt als Bedingung des Lebens und der Erz a« hlung zu achten, und man wird sich doch wohl gegen die gottgegebenen Formen menschlicher Erkenntnis nich auflehnen wollen. Let usnot forgetthe conditionof lifeasnarration: that we can never see the whole picture at onceunless we propose to throw overboard all the God-conditioned forms of human knowledge.

    -Thomas Mann
      Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), vol.2.

  •    If you wanttoknow thetaste of a pear, you musttastethe pear by eating it for yourself. If you want to know the theoryand methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.

    -Mao Zedong or MaoTse-tung
       Address to the  Anti- Japanese Military and Political College,  Jul.

  • Qui Deus a dune   esci e« nce e de parler bone eloquence, ne s'en deit taisir ne celer, ainz se deit voluntiers mustrer. Whoever God has given knowledge and eloquence in speaking, should not be silent or secretive, but should willingly show it.

    -Jose   Carlos Maria t egui
    c.1170  Lais, prologue, l.1^4.

  • Nature that framed us of four elements, Warring within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds: Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous architecture of the world, And measure every wandering planet's course, Still climbing after knowledge infinite, And always moving as the restless spheres, Wills us to wear ourselves, and never rest, Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, That perfect bliss and sole felicity, The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

    - Christopher Marlowe
      Tamburlaine the Great (published1590), pt.1, act 2, sc.7.

  • The sociologists of knowledge have been among those raising high the banner which reads: 'We don't know if what we say is true, but it is at least significant.' The sociologists and psychologists engaged in the study of publicopinionand mass communications aremost often found in the opposed camp of the empiricists† 'We don't know that what we say is particularly significant, but it is at least true.'

    - Robert King Merton
      Social Theory and Social Structure (rev. edn), pt.3, introduction.

  • The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you.

    - Henry Valentine Miller
      The Air-Conditioned Nightmare,'The Soul of  Anaesthesia'.

  • It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world.

    -John Milton
      Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

  • Where there is much to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, muchwriting, manyopinions; foropinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

    -John Milton
      Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

  • As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of good and evil?

    -John Milton
      Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

  • Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout intotheregions of sinand falsity thanby reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

    -John Milton
      Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

  • Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste; And all amid them stood theTree of Life, High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit Of vegetable gold; and next to life Our death theTree of Knowledge grew fast by, Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.218^24.

  • But knowledge is as food, and needs no less Her temperance over appetite, to know In measure what the mind may well contain, Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.7, l.126^30.

  •    All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded, wisdom in discourse with her Loses discount'nanced, and like folly shows.

    -John Milton
       Adam speaking of Eve. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.8, l.551^3.

  • The assaying of tea is an art and not a science. It is the man, and not his instruments, which is the most important.There can be no substitute for myexperience and intuited knowledge.

    -Timothy Mo
      An Insular Possession, ch.4.

  • 'Tis certain we have but very imperfect accounts of the manners and religion of these people; this part of the world being seldomvisited,but bymerchants, whomind little but their own affairs; or travellers, who make too short a stay to be able to report anything exactly of their own knowledge.

    - Lady Mary Wortley ne  e Pierrepoint Montagu
    c.1716  Of  Turkey. Collected in Lord Wharncliffe (ed)  The Letters and Works of Lady Mary  Wortley Montagu (1837).

  • It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz, and I, myself, happened to bethe creator intheyear1902† Jazz music isa style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in jazz, if one has the knowledge.

    -Jelly Roll (Ferdinand) Morton
      In Downbeat,  Aug.

  • Perhapsthemost sublimeinsights oftheJewishprophets and the Christian gospel is the knowledge that since perfection is love, the apprehension of perfection is at once the means of seeing one's imperfections and the consoling assurance of grace which makes this realization bearable. This ultimate paradox of high religion is not an invention of theologians or priests. It is constantly validated by the most searching experiences of life.

    - Reinhold Niebuhr
      Reflections on the End of an Era.

  • The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.

    - Reinhold Niebuhr
    The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol.1.

  • Here, of all her cities, throbbed the true lifethe true power and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudityof youth, disdaining rivalry; saneand healthyand vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new- found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its wealth, infinite in its desires.

    - Frank Benjamin Franklin Norris
      Of Chicago. The Pit, ch.2.

  • Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

    - Blaise Pascal
    c.1654^1662  Pense  es, no.23.

  • I am imbued with two deep impressions; the first, that science knows no country; the second, which seems to contradict the first, although it is really a direct consequence of it†that science is the highest personification of the nation. Science knows no country because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.

    - Louis Pasteur
      Toast at the banquet of the International Congress of Sericulture (translated by Rene   Dubois).

  • I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better Knowledge, sent to where I met him, down the Lachlan, years ago. He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him, Just 'on spec', addressed as follows: 'Clancy, of the Overflow'. And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected, (And I think the same was written with a thumbnail dipped in tar) 'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it: 'Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

    - Banjo (Andrew Barton) Paterson
      'Clancy of the Overflow', first published in the Bulletin, collected in The Man from Snowy River and OtherVerses (1895).

  • No writer, sacred or profane, ever uses the words 'he'or 'him'of the soul. It is always 'she'or 'her'; so universal is theintuitive knowledgethatthesoul, with regard to God who is her life, is feminine.

    - Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
      The Rod, the Root, and the Flower,'Aurea Dicta', no.21.

  • Scientific discoveryand scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of them without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.

    - Max Karl Ernst Planck
      Where is Science Going? pt.4 (translated byJames Murphy).

  • If we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself.

    -Plato
    Phaedo, 66d (translated by H Tredennick).

  • Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest, In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer, Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much.

    - Alexander Pope
      An Essay on Man, epistle 2, l.1^12.

  • All our knowledge is, ourselves to know.

    - Alexander Pope
      An Essay on Man, epistle 4, l.398.

  • It isnot his possession of knowledge, of irrefutabletruth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.

    - Sir Karl Raimund Popper
      The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

  •    For this, indeed, isthetruesource ofour ignorancethe fact that our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

    - Sir Karl Raimund Popper
      Lecture to the British Academy, 20 Jan.

  • There is at least one philosophical problem in which all thinking men are interested. It is the problem of cosmology: the problem of understanding the worldincluding ourselves, and our knowledge, as part of the world. All science is cosmology, I believe, and for me the interest of philosophy, no less than that of science, lies solely in the contributions which it has made to it.

    - Sir Karl Raimund Popper
      The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), preface to1959 edition.

  • What we should do, I suggest, is to give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can doistogrope for truth even though it be beyond our reach.

    - Sir Karl Raimund Popper
      Conjectures and Refutations (published1963), introduction.

  • Concerning the gods I am not in a position to know either that they are or that they are not, or what theyare like in appearance; for there are many things that are preventing knowledge, the obscurity of the matter and the brevity of human life.

    -Protagoras
    Quoted in G B Kerferd The Sophistic Movement (1981), ch.13.

  • La me  decine a fait quelques petits progre'  s dans ses connaissances depuis Molie'  re, mais aucun dans son vocabulaire. Medicine has made a few, small advances in knowledge since Molie' r e, but none in its vocabulary.

    - Marcel Proust
    ' 1921 A la recherche du temps perdu,'Sodome et Gomorrhe'.

  • I do not think it possible to get anywhere if we start from scepticism.We must start from a broad acceptance of whatever seems to be knowledge and is not rejected for some specific reason.

    - Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
      My Philosophical Development, ch.16.

  • All craftsmen share a knowledge. They have held Reality down fluttering to a bench.

    -Vita (Victoria Mary) Sackville-West
      The Land,'Summer'.

  • DefinitionScience is systematized positive knowledge, what has been taken as such in different ages and in different places. TheoremThe acquisition and systematization of positive knowledge are the only human activities which are truly cumulative and progressive.CorollaryThe history of science is the only history which can illustrate the progress of mankind. In fact, progress has no definite and unquestionable meaning in other fields than the field of science.

    - George A Sarton
      The Study of the History of Science.

  • Danser, c'est de  couvrir et recre  er, surtout lorsque la danse est danse d'amour. C'est, en tout cas, le meilleur mode de connaissance. To dance is to discover and to recreate, above all when the dance is the dance of love. It is the best mode of knowledge.

    - Le  opold Se  dar Senghor
      Au Congr e' s de l'Union nationale de laJeunesse du Mali, Dakar. English  economist.   He   stressed  the   importance  of   the  last hour's   work   in   the   cotton  factories   and  opposed  the   trade unions.   His   works   include  On   the  Cost   of   Obtaining  Money (1830),  An  Outline  of  the  Science  of  Political  Economy  (1836) and Value of Money (1840).

  • The very power of science to hold knowledge as collective knowledge is founded upon a degree and a quality of trust which are arguably unparalleled elsewhere in our culture† Scientists know so much about the natural world by knowing so much about whom they can trust.

    - Steven Shapin
      A Social History ofTruth.

  •    You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.

    - Mary Godwin Shelley
      Frankenstein, letter 4.

  • Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge!† Depend upon it, Mrs Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.

    - Richard Brinsley Sheridan
      SirAnthonyAbsolute.The Rivals, act1, sc.2.

  •    Loving in truth, and vain in verse my love to show, That she (dear she) mighttake some pleasure of my pain, Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know; Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.

    - Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway Shute
    Astrophel and Stella, sonnet1.

  • The Englishwoman's clothes, too, have improved out of all knowledge†no longer are our hats, as inVictorian days, a kind of Pageant of Empire, whereon the products of all the colonies battle for precedence.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      EnglishWomen.

  • There is only one good, knowledge, and only one evil, ignorance.

    -Socrates
    Quoted in Diogenes LaertiusVitae Philosophorum, 2.31 (translated by R D Hicks,1950).

  • Science is organized knowledge.

    - Herbert Spencer
    Education, ch. 2.

  • Summum Mentis bonum est Dei cognitio, et summa Mentis virtus Deum cognoscere. The greatest good of the mind is the knowledge of God, and the greatest virtue of the mind is to know God.

    - Baruch also known as Benedict de Spinoza Spinoza
      Ethics, bk.4, prop.28.

  • In vita itaque apprime utile est, intellectum seu Rationem, quantum possumus, perficere, et in hoc uno summa hominis felicitas seu beatitudo consistit; quippe beatitudo nihil aliud est, quam ipsa animi acquiescentia quae ex Dei intuitiva cognitione oritur. It is therefore extrememly useful in life to perfect as much as we can the intellect or reason, and of this alone doesthegreatest happiness or blessedness of man exist: for blessedness is nothing else than satisfaction of mind which arises from the intuitive knowledge of God.

    - Baruch also known as Benedict de Spinoza Spinoza
      Ethics, bk.4, appendix.

  • Ex tertio cognitionis genere oritur necessarioAmor Dei intellectualis. From the third kind of knowledge [intuition] arises necessarily the intellectual love of God.

    - Baruch also known as Benedict de Spinoza Spinoza
      Ethics, bk.5, prop.32, corollary.

  • Language and knowledge are indissolubly connected; theyare interdependent.Good work in language presupposes and depends on a real knowledge of things.

    - Anne Sullivan
      Speech to theAmerican Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, Jul.

  • Knowledge is a sacred cow, and my problem will be how we can milk her while keeping clear of her horns.

    - Albert von Nagyrapolt Szent-Gyo«  rgyi
      In Science, vol.146.

  • Thisgrey spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.30^2.

  • Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Locksley Hall', l.141^2.

  • Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before.

    -Tennyson
      In Memoriam A.H.H., prologue, l.25^8.

  • Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Blessed ishe who hasbeenabletowinknowledge of the causes of things.

    -Virgil full name Publius Vergilius Maro
    Georgics, 2.490 (translated by H Rushton Fairclough).

  • With a thorough knowledge of the Bible, Shakespeare and Wisden, you cannot go far wrong.

    - Evelyn Arthur StJohn Waugh
      A Little Learning.

  • Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

    -John Wesley
    Quoted in R Southey Life ofWesley (1820), ch.16.

  • Perhaps true knowledge only comes of death by torture in the country of the mind.

    - Patrick Victor Martindale White
      Voss, ch.16.

  •    Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.

    - Alfred North Whitehead
      'TheAims of Education; a plea for reform', address as president of the Mathematical Association.

  • Divorce is the sign of knowledge in our time.

    -William Carlos Williams
      Paterson, bk.1,'The Delineaments of the Giants', 2.

  • It came by a lightning flash like knowledge from the gods.

    - Edward O(sborne) Wilson
      On the1953 discovery of the DNA molecule. Sociobiology.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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