Famous Quotes & Sayings

Isaac Asimov

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

Isaac Asimov

To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.

Isaac Asimov

Scientific apparatus offers a window to knowledge, but as they grow more elaborate, scientists spend ever more time washing the windows.

Isaac Asimov

There's so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.

Isaac Asimov

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.

Immanuel Kant

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind... The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.

Immanuel Kant

All our knowledge begins with the senses,

Immanuel Kant

There is nothing higher than reason.

Immanuel Kant

We assume a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of skepticism.

Immanuel Kant

Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority... Supere aude! Dare to use your own understanding!is thus the motto of the Enlightenment.

Immanuel Kant

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

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.

George Will

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge

George S. Patton

We must guard against becoming so engrossed in the specific nature of the roots and bark of the trees of knowledge as to miss the meaning and grandeur of the forest they compose.

Jean Kerr

I will read anything rather than work.

James A. Baldwin

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

Christopher Lasch

Knowledge is what we get when an observer, preferably a scientifically trained observer, provides us with a copy of reality that we can all recognize.

Gaston Bachelard

In scientific thought, the concept functions all the better for being cut off from all background images. In its full exercise, the scientific concept is free from all the delays of its genetic evolution, an evolution which is consequently explained by simple psychology. The virility of knowledge increases with each conquest of the constructive abstraction.

Frank Oz

A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.

Francois Rabelais

What harm in learning and getting knowledge even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a mitten, or a slipper. [Fr., Que nuist savoir tousjours et tousjours apprendre, fust ce D'un sot, d'une pot, d'une que--doufle D'un mouffe, d'un pantoufle.]

Francis Bacon

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

Knowledge is a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.

Francis Bacon

There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.

Frances Wright

Knowledge signifies things known. Where there are no things known, there is no knowledge. Where there are no things to be known, there can be no knowledge. We have observed that every science, that is, every branch of knowledge, is compounded of certain facts, of which our sensations furnish the evidence. Where no such evidence is supplied, we are without data; we are without first premises; and when, without these, we attempt to build up a science, we do as those who raise edifices without foundations. And what do such builders construct? Castles in the air.

George Wald

A scientist lives with all reality. There is nothing better. To know reality is to accept it, and eventually to love it.

George Wald

A scientist should be the happiest of men. Not that science isn't serious; but as everyone knows, being serious is one way of being happy, just as being gay is one way of being unhappy.

George Santayana

Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They may all collapse altogether.

George Santayana

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

George Meredith

Cultivated men and women who do not skim the cream of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute and balanced observers.

G. H. Hardy

It is rather astonishing how little practical value scientific knowledge has for ordinary men, how dull and commonplace such of it as has value is, and how its value seems almost to vary inversely to its reputed utility.

G. H. Hardy

Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.

G. H. Hardy

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.

Friedrich Nietzsche

In the knowledge of truth, what really matters is the possession of it, not the impulse under which it was sought.