Knowledge Quotes - Page 36

• There is something irreversible about acquiring knowledge; and the simulation of the search for it differs in a most profound way from the reality.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Science, Reality, Differences

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (1947). “Physics in the Contemporary World”

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• To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.

  Louis Pasteur

  Science, Agents, Body

  Hippocrates, Ambroise Paré, William Harvey, Edward Jenner, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1910). “Scientific Papers; Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology”

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• To inquisitive minds like yours and mine the reflection that the quantity of human knowledge bears no proportion to the quantity of human ignorance must be in one view rather pleasing, viz., that though we are to live forever we may be continually amused and delighted with learning something new.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Learning, Ignorance, Science

  Benjamin Franklin, Albert H. Smyth (1905). “Writings, Collected and Ed. with a Life and Introd”

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• Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas; he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Science, Ideas

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.142

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• But science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked the development of modern civilisation.

  Arthur Balfour

  Change, Religious, Science

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• But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men.

  Francis Bacon

  Science, Men, Errors

  Francis Bacon (1765). “The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes”, p.81

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• By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something about everything; he knew a great deal about everything.

  H. L. Mencken

  Philosophy, Science, Curiosity

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• By this we may understand, there be two sorts of knowledge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or knowledge original (as I have said at the beginning of the second chapter), and remembrance of the same; the other is called science or knowledge of the truth of propositions, and how things are called, and is derived from understanding.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Science, Two, Remembrance

  Thomas Hobbes (1750). “The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...”, p.12

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• Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science.

  Samuel Johnson

  Science, Men, Criticism

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.27

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism.

  Francis Crick

  Science, Enemy, Knows

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

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Arrogance, Arrogant

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Science, People, Realization

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• 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”

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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