Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.
To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.
All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge.
Where knowledge ends. . . feeling and imagination begin.
When a person acts without knowledge of what he thinks, feels, needs or wants, he does not yet have the option of choosing to act differently.
Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.
Information can perhaps be useful as a support-stick and help you cross the way. . . but if you want to find your way in the darkness, only knowledge can forge that path for you. . . only knowledge.
There are certain truths which stand out so openly on the roadsides of life, as it were, that every passer-by may see them. Yet, because of their obviousness, the general run of people disregard such truths or at least they do not make them the object of any concious knowledge. People are so bliend to some of the simplest facts in everyday life that they are highly surprised when somebody calls attention to what everybody ought to know.
A people's literature is the great text-book for real knowledge of them.
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
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.
All names of good and evil are images; they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who seeks knowledge from them.
Economic knowledge necessarily leads to liberalism
There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.
According to our social science, we can be or become wise in all matters of secondary importance, but we have to be resigned to utter ignorance in the most important respect: we cannot have any knowledge regarding the ultimate principles of our choices, i. e. regarding their soundness or unsoundness. . . We are then in the position of beings who are sane and sober when engaged in trivial business and who gamble like madmen when confronted with serious issues.
It is disgraceful to live as a stranger in one's country, and be an alien in any matter that affects our welfare.
The pursuit of knowledge is an intoxicant, a lure that scientists and explorers have known from ancient times; indeed, exhilaration in the pursuit of knowledge is part of what has kept our species so adaptive.
We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibilities that have been turned over to governments, corporations, and specialists, and put those fragments back together again in our own minds and in our families and household and neighborhoods.
I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge in innumerable spheres and enjoyed it as an always ready instrument for exercising the mind and penetrating further and further. Best of all, mine has been a life of loving and being loved. What a tragedy that all this will disappear with the used-up body!
