Knowledge

"Knowledge is the antidote to fear,— Knowledge, Use and Reason, with its higher aids."

"The Doctrine of Knowledge, apart from all special and definite knowing, proceeds immediately upon Knowledge itself, in the essential unity in which it recognises Knowledge as existing; and it raises this question in the first place — How this Knowledge can come into being, and what it is in its inward and essential Nature? The following must be apparent: — There is but One who is absolutely by and through himself, — namely, God; and God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life. He can neither change nor determine himself in aught within himself, nor become any other Being; for his Being contains within it all his Being and all possible Being, and neither within him nor out of him can any new Being arise."

"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again; The never-satisfied man is so strange—if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully, but in order to begin another. I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretches out his arms again for others."

"The first step to self-knowledge is self-distrust. Nor can we attain to any kind of knowledge, except by a like process."

"There are a multitude of allied branches of knowledge connected with man's condition; the relation of these to political economy is analogous to the connexion of mechanics, astronomy, optics, sound, heat, and every other branch more or less of physical science, with pure mathematics."

"Knowledge of the truth I may perhaps have attained to; happiness certainly not. What shall I do? Accomplish something in the world, men tell me. Shall I then publish my grief to the world, contribute one more proof for the wretchedness and misery of existence, perhaps discover a new flaw in human life, hitherto unnoticed? I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent."

"Not if I know myself at all."

"Knowledge, when only the possession of a few, has almost always been turned to iniquitous purposes."

"Who knows how many links we may have to ascend in the vast cycle of worlds around, ere we arrive at the one which is knowledge — where we may look before, and after, and judge of the whole ? How many stages of probation may we yet have to pass !"

"As all true virtue, wherever found, is a ray of the life of the All-Holy; so all solid knowledge, all really accurate thought, descends from the Eternal Reason, and ought, when we apprehend it, to guide us upwards to Him."

"'Tain't a knowin' kind of cattle Thet is ketched with mouldy corn."

"To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meanest student of knowledge should be unknown."

"A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop."

"Let me always remember that it is not the amount of religious knowledge which I have, but the amount which I use, that determines my religious position and character."

"Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power."

"As revelation is the great strengthener of reason, the march of mind which leaves the Bible in the rear, is an advance, like that of our first parents in Paradise, towards knowledge, but, at the same time, towards death."

"Only by knowledge of that which is not thyself, shall thyself be learned."

"To understand at all what life means, one must begin with Christian belief. And I think knowledge may be sorrow with a man unless he loves."

"The scientists take for granted that the education of the schools creates intelligence; very often it does no such thing. It creates a superficial appearance of knowledge indeed; but knowledge is like food, unless it be thoroughly assimilated when absorbed, and thoroughly digested, it can give no nourishment; it lies useless, a heavy and unleavened mass."

"It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge."

"The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge. It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with energy and ethical significance."

"Every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application."

"A life of knowledge is not often a life of injury and crime."

"Every man is a valuable member of society who, by his observations, researches, and experiments, procures knowledge for men … it is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high superiority which he holds over the other animals who inhabit the earth with him, and consequently no ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil … the particle and the planet are subject to the same laws, and what is learned of one will be known of the other … I bequeath the whole of my property … to the United States of America to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

"The essential difference between that knowledge which is, and that which is not conclusive evidence of Christian character, lies in this: the object of the one is the agreement of the several parts of a theological proposition; the object of the other is moral beauty, the intrinsic loveliness of God and Divine things. The sinner sees and hates; the saint sees and loves."

"Knowledge alone is the being of Nature, Giving a soul to her manifold features, Lighting through paths of the primitive darkness, The footsteps of Truth and the vision of Song."

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers."

"Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail Against her beauty? May she mix With men and prosper! Who shall fix Her pillars? Let her work prevail."

"For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness."

"We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter."

"Man's knowledge, save before his fellow man, Is ignorance—his widest wisdom folly."

"Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams."

"Knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty."

"According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man’s faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man’s faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man’s knowledge which belongs to his own mind, is subjective: that which flows in upon him from the world external to him, is objective."

"Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. (Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so, Only what nobody denies is so.)"

"He who binds His soul to knowledge, steals the key of heaven."

"A man who knows how little he knows is well, a man who knows how much he knows is sick."

"Love and knowledge have one and the same goal, for both strive to overcome the separation in the elements of being and return to the point of their original unity.… To know an object means to negate the distance between it and consciousness; it means, in a certain sense, to become one with the object: cognitio nihil est aliud, quam Coitio quaedam cum suo cognobili. [Knowledge is nothing else than a kind of union with what is known.]"

"Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I'm not worried about my soul."

""Knowledge," in the sense of information, means the working capital, the indispensable resources, of further inquiry; of finding out, or learning, more things. Frequently it is treated as an end in itself, and then the goal becomes to heap it up and display it when called for. This static, cold-storage ideal of knowledge is inimical to educative development."

"The notion that "applied" knowledge is somehow less worthy than "pure" knowledge, was natural to a society in which all useful work was performed by slaves and serfs, and in which industry was controlled by the models set by custom rather than by intelligence. Science, or the highest knowing, was then identified with pure theorizing, apart from all application in the uses of life; and knowledge relating to useful arts suffered the stigma attaching to the classes who engaged in them."

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

"I want to know God's thoughts — the rest are mere details."

"The general policy of the past has been to drive, but the era of force must give way to that of knowledge, and the policy of the future will be to teach and to lead, to the advantage of all concerned."

"If a man empties his purse into his head no man can take it from him. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

"The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows."

"I must know everything. I must penetrate the heart of his secret! I must become Caligari!"

"There are gems of wondrous brightness Ofttimes lying at our feet, And we pass them, walking thoughtless, Down the busy, crowded street. If we knew, our pace would slacken, We would step more oft with care, Lest our careless feet be treading To the earth some jewel rare."

"The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all 'knowledge' is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system."

"'Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not.'"