Quotes on Knowledge

Human behaviour reveals uniformities which constitute natural laws. If these uniformities did not exist, then there would be neither social science nor political economy, and even the study of history would largely be useless. In effect, if the future actions of men having nothing in common with their past actions, our knowledge of them, although possibly satisfying our curiosity by way of an interesting story, would be entirely useless to us as a guide in life.

To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

We know the laws of trial and error, of large numbers and probabilities. We know that these laws are part of the mathematical and mechanical fabric of the universe, and that they are also at play in biological processes. But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

The time has come to link ecology to economic and human development. When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. What is happening to the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil will affect us all.

It is by logic we prove. It is by intuition we discover.

Pocket all your knowledge with your watch, and never pull it out in company unless desired.

When all beliefs are challenged together, the just and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and re-establish themselves alone.

One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer.

Conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends.

In almost all sciences the fundamental knowledge is either found in earliest times or is still being sought.

Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal.

Nowhere else can one find so miscellaneous, so various, an amount of knowledge as is contained in a good newspaper.

Many men are stored full of unused knowledge. Like loaded guns that are never fired off, or military magazines in times of peace, they are stuffed with useless ammunition.

Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.

It is knowledge that influences and equalizes the social condition of man; that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common, and enjoyments which are universal.

Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are, and so makes its theory more popular and convincing.

All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

I do not believe that the Good Lord plays dice.

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.