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Knowledge

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“And it’s completely not necessary for anyone to make mistake because everyone’s Self is Total Knowledge, Veda. Veda is Total Knowledge, and Veda is the nature of the Self, and bliss is the nature of the Self. And even in the outside world everyone wants to move in the direction of greater joy.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wherever there is greater joy, there is the direction of everyone’s activity, because the innermost of everyone is really the lighted lamp of Total Knowledge, total organising power of knowledge, it’s all bliss, it’s not necessary for the people to suffer.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The art of writing history is the art of emphasizing the significant facts at the expense of the insignificant. And it is the same in every field of knowledge. Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother about.”
Robert Wilson Lynd (1879–1949) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert Lynd (1926) The orange tree: a volume of essays. p.60. The last sentence "Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother about." was cited in some sources in the 1960s, such as August Kerber (196…
“Experience shows that knowledge dies very hard once it has been obtained—the acquisition of knowledge is essentially irreversible, a truth already recognized in the Garden of Eden.”
Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn't dream a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy.”
Jean-Louis Gassée (born 1944) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer, 1999
“Let's say they bombed Natanz or Isfahan's facilities, how can they bomb knowledge? You see, knowledge brings immunity and power. … Those who threaten to bomb Iran, even if they bomb the nuclear facilities, they cannot achieve their goals.”
Ali Khamenei (1939–2026) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Yvette Hovsepian-Bearce, The Political Ideology of Ayatollah Khamenei: Out of the Mouth of the Supreme Leader of Iran, London: Routledge, 2016, p. 347.
“Because of mathematical indeterminancy and the uncertainty principle, it may be a law of nature that no nervous system is capable of acquiring enough knowledge to significantly predict the future of any other intelligent system in detail. Nor can intelligent minds gain enough self-knowledge to know their own future, capture fate, and in this sense eliminate free will.”
E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, "Who are we?”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“True knowledge is that knowledge which makes man after self-realization or union with God assert that his real Self is in everything and everybody.”
Meher Baba (1894–1969) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Meher Baba Journal (June 1941), p. 480.
“There are two allied powers in man; knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth seen in a distorted medium as the mind arrives at by groping, wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.”
Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.”
Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Eberhard Bethge (25 May 1944), Letters and papers from Prison (1997), p. 311
“You see only the productions of second-rate folk who are in a hurry to get wealth and fame. The true knowledge, the deadly knowledge, is still kept secret. But, believe me, my friend, it is there.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The will is not fundamentally right, as the practical ones would like very much to assure us; one may not pass over the desire for knowledge in order to stand immediately in the will, but knowledge perfects itself to will when it desensualizes itself and creates itself as a spirit "which builds its own body.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The prophet [ Isaiah ]... points out what will be the cause of this change; for he says that hatred, quarrel, and fighting will come to an end, because men will have a true knowledge of God. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters which cover the sea" (Isa. xi. ver. 9) Note it.”
Maimonides (1135–1204) said by 1204 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward.”
John Henry Newman (1801–1890) said by 1890 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Kant [...] stated that he had “found it necessary to deny knowledge […] to make room for faith,” but all he had “denied” was knowledge of things that are unknowable, and he had not made room for faith but for thought.”
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To successfully respond to the myriad of changes that shake the world, transformation into a new style of management is required. The route to take is what I call profound knowledge - knowledge for leadership of transformation.”
W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not more knowledge but better use of the knowledge which we now have, is perhaps the main educational need and the main educational problem which confronts us.”
Norman Angell (1872–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as with the learned. For knowledge has no limits, and none has yet achieved perfection in it. Good speech is more hidden than malachite, yet it is found in the possession of women slaves at the millstones.”
Ptahhotep (2451–2401 BC) said by 2401 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When David Marr at MIT moved into computer vision, he generated a lot of excitement, but he hit up against the problem of knowledge representation; he had no good representations for knowledge in his vision systems.”
Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Marvin Minsky in: David G. Stork (1998). HAL's Legacy: 2001's Computer As Dream and Reality. p. 16
“One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable. There is no absolute knowledge and those who claim it, whether they are scientist or dogmatist, open the door to tragedy. All knowledge, all information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility.”
Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Understanding is a hand-maiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The manner in which a paradoxer will show himself, as to sense or nonsense, will not depend upon what he maintains, but upon whether he has or has not made a sufficient knowledge of what has been done by others, especially as to the mode of doing it, a preliminary to inventing knowledge for himself.”
Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) said by 1871 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Aspiring to lead others, they have never given themselves the fair chance of being first led by other others into something better than they can start for themselves; and that they should first do this is what both those classes of others have a fair right to expect. New knowledge... must come by contemplation of old knowledge... mechanical contrivance sometimes, not very often, escapes this rule.”
Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) said by 1871 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In order to acquire any exact and solid knowledge, the student must possess with perfect precision the ideas appropriate to that part of knowledge: and this precision is tested by the student's 'perceiving' the axiomatic evidence of the 'axioms' belonging to each 'Fundamental Idea'.”
William Whewell (1794–1866) said by 1866 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The distinction of Fact and Theory is only relative. Brute animals have a practical knowledge of relations of space and force; but they have no knowledge of Geometry or Mechanicks.”
William Whewell (1794–1866) said by 1866 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Grace is given of God, but knowledge is bought in the market; Knowledge needful for all, yet cannot be had for the asking.”
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) said by 1861 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.”
Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ultramares Corp. v. Touche, 255 N.Y. 170, 179, 174 N.E. 441, 444 (N.Y. 1931).
“Yet this withholding of knowledge ran against every grain of his character. He believed intensely that the refusal to share knowledge demeaned both the denier and the denied.”
Stephen R. Donaldson (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lottery? All of them? Not guessed them, not dreamed them, but really knew them? What would you do? You would run to the store. You would mark those numbers on the play card. And you would win...Same for killing people.”
Lee Child (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Which makes you just about the most powerful person on earth. When it comes to killing people. And then getting away with it.”
Lee Child (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never have I been so much alone — I tried to think of my knowledge, but it was a squirrel's heap of winter nuts. There was no strength in my knowledge any more and I felt small and naked as a new-hatched bird — alone upon the great river, the servant of the gods.”
Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) said by 1943 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Through knowledge, you can develop the economy. Without knowledge, you cannot improve a society.”
Newton Lee first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: American Film Institute (November 4, 2006)
“Albert Einstein quipped that “everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open.” Although we may not have the complete knowledge or we may be bombarded with contradictory information, we can still make informed decisions based on wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil.”
Newton Lee wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we deplore is not that the gate of western knowledge was thrown open to Indians, but that such knowledge was imported to India at the sacrifice of our own cultural heritage. What was needed was a proper synthesis between the two systems and not neglect, far less destruction, of the Indian base.”
Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (1901–1953) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech delivered at Gurkula Visvavidyalaya Convocation on 25th April 1943.
“I take it as a given that God's knowledge of the Cerebus storyline dwarfs my own as God's knowledge of everything dwarfs my own. (#2, p. 9)”
Dave Sim (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One advantage of exhibiting a hierarchy of systems in this way is that it gives us some idea of the present gaps in both theoretical and empirical knowledge. Adequate theoretical models extend up to about the fourth level, and not much beyond. Empirical knowledge is deficient at practically all levels.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 201, quoted in: John P. Cole, Cuchlaine A. M. King (1969) Quantitative geography: techniques and theories in geography. p. 575
“It is absurd to suppose we can think of nature as a system apart from knowledge, for it is knowledge that is increasingly determining the course of nature”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 141 as cited in John Laurent (2003) Evolutionary Economics and Human Nature. p. 175
“At exactly the time when the fatal knowledge of how to destroy the entire human race has fallen forever into our hands, the knowledge of morality has fallen out.”
Peter Kreeft (born 1937) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Back to Virtue (1992), p. 20
“We could all be mediums, and all have absolute knowledge, if the bright light of our ego consciousness would not dim it. … I have myself observed that in states of extreme fatigue, when I am really dangerously physically exhausted, I suddenly get absolute knowledge; …”
Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can fight the international technocracy in an efficient way only by challenging it on its very own field of activity, the economic science, and by opposing a kind of knowledge that respects human beings and realities towards that mutilated kind of knowledge used by the technocrats themselves.”
Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pierre Bourdieu on a strike meeting of governmental employees in Lyon/France, 1995. Quote from: Grefe C., Greffrath M. & Schumann H. Attac: Was wollen die Globalisierungskritiker? Berlin: Rowohlt p. 15
“Not at all. I would like for them to have changed, that there be new knowledge that says that your nurture is much more important than nature. But I haven’t seen any knowledge. And there’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites on I.Q. tests. I would say the difference is, it’s genetic.”
James D. Watson (1928–2025) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1 January 2019
“[I wish]to engrave and distribute [the prints] for the benefit and knowledge and use of painters and sculptors and other knowledge-able persons.”
Titian (1490–1576) first seen 1450 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: official document, 1567; as quoted by Bruce Kohl in Titian and Venetian Painting, 1450-1590; publishers Westview Press, 1999, p. 117
“It can hardly be a matter for surprise that our race has not succeeded in solving any large part of its most difficult problems in the first millionth part of its existence. Perhaps life would be a duller affair if it had. For to many it is not knowledge but the quest for knowledge that gives the greater interest to thought - to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”
James Jeans (1877–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We live in a time where universal education and the universal ability to read should open up the whole array of knowledge to every denizen on the planet. And those who would care to be gatekeepers or bottle- necks - and keep a choke hold on the flow of knowledge - simply need to step down and stand aside.”
Steven M. Greer (born 1955) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a wide knowledge gap between us and the developed world in the West and in Asia. Our only choice is to bridge this gap as quickly as possible, because our age is defined by knowledge.”
Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (born 1949) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in John Leyne, "Dubai ruler in vast charity gift," BBC News (2007-05-19)
“It is accepted fact that the world has been moving from an economy of goods to an economy of knowledge. And knowledge is the single most important resource to any advanced society.”
Francis Escudero (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.”
Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The spark of spiritual knowledge (jnana) will consume all creation. Since all the countless worlds are built upon the weak or non-existent foundation of the ego, they all disintegrate when the atom-bomb of knowledge falls on them.”
Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source