Knowledge Quotes - Page 33

• 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

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• 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

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

  Ronald Fisher

  Science, World, Inference

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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”

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge à priori.

  Immanuel Kant

  Philosophy, Science, Principles

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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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• Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks it own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the common stock than that which it immediately succeeds.

  Charles Babbage

  Science, Progress, Succeed

  "The Exposition of 1851; or, Views of the industry, the science, and the government of England".

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• 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

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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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