Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

I like to have a man's knowledge comprehend more than one class of topics, one row of shelves. I like a man who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom or even to knowledge, as a stubborn temper to happiness.

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?

The system of book-keeping by double entry is, perhaps, the most beautiful one in the wide domain of literature or science. Were it less common, it would be the admiration of the learned world.

Take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses and once again go to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge.

The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.

Science is but the exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance.

To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century; without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.

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

Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a participation of that one eternal, immutable and increased wisdom of God, or several signatures of that one archetypal seal, or like so many multiplied reflections of one and the same face, made in several glasses, whereof some are clearer, some obscurer, some standing nearer, some further off.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ...

It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music, and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the possibilities that lie within the human spirit -- enable them to see visions and dream dreams.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Hindsight is an exact science.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

The good life is one inspired by life and guided by knowledge.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

Science is what you know, philosophy what you don't know.

The trouble is that rich people, well-to-do people, very often don't really know who the poor are; and that is why we can forgive them, for knowledge can only lead to love, and love to service. And so, if they are not touched by them, it's because they do not know them.

There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.

Fashion is the science of appearance, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.

The latest refinements of science are linked with the cruelties of the Stone Age.

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut [Animals] up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph... ''Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?''

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.

''Knowledge is power.'' Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge -- broad, deep knowledge -- is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man's progress is to feel the great heartthrobs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

Science is a collection of successful recipes.

To know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark.

Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.

Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others.

This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.

I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with. And, in the end, I distilled everything down to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die.

Do not worry about the incarnation of ideas. If you are a poet, your works will contain them without your knowledge -- they will be both moral and national if you follow your inspiration freely.

A wise man has great power, and a man of knowledge increases strength. [Proverbs 24:5]