“Theoretical knowledge is only a small and by no means the most important part of what passed for knowledge in a society… the primary knowledge about the institutional order is knowledge… is the sum total of ‘what everybody knows’ about a social world, an assemblage of maxims, morals, proverbial nuggets of wisdom, values and beliefs, myths, and so forth.”

— Peter L. Berger , book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 65

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Peter L. Berger 45

Austrian-born American sociologist 1929–2017

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“Whatever we know about society, or indeed about the world in which we live, we know through the mass media. This is true not only of our knowledge of society but also of our knowledge of nature.”

Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist

Source: The reality of the Mass Media (2000), p. 1.

“What is knowledge? Ever since class society came into being the world has had only two kinds of knowledge, knowledge of the struggle of production and knowledge of the class struggle. Natural science and social science are the crystallization of these two kinds of knowledge, and philosophy is the generalization and summation of the knowledge of nature.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Original: (zh-CN) 什么是知识？自从有阶级的社会存在以来，世界上的知识只有两门，一门叫做生产斗争知识，一门叫做阶级斗争知识。自然科学、社会科学，就是这两门知识的结晶，哲学则是关于自然知识和社会知识的概括和总结。 note: "整顿党的作风"
Source: "Rectify the Party's Style of Work" (1942)

“There are three parts to learning: information, knowledge and wisdom, A mere accumulation of information is not knowledge, and a treasure of knowledge is not in itself, wisdom.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ink and Bone

“Knowledge is not something which exists and grows in the abstract. It is a function of human organisms and of social organization. Knowledge, that is to say, is always what somebody knows: the most perfect transcript of knowledge in writing is not knowledge if nobody knows it. Knowledge however grows by the receipt of meaningful information - that is, by the intake of messages by a knower which are capable of reorganising his knowledge.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, General Systems Theory - The Skeleton of Science, 1956, p. 197

“Wisdom is a kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of the nature, career, and consequences of human values.”

Sidney Hook (1902–1989) American philosopher

“The child does not internalize the world of his significant others as one of many possible worlds… It is for this reason that the world internalized in primary socialization is so much more firmly entrenched in consciousness than worlds internalized in secondary socialization…. Secondary socialization is the internalization of institutional or institution-based ‘sub worlds’… The roles of secondary socialization carry a high degree of anonymity… The same knowledge taught by one teacher could also be taught by another… The institutional distribution of tasks between primary and secondary socialization varies with the complexity of the social distribution of knowledge”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 129-147

“The handbills announce me as the President of the Theosophical Society, and you gathered here to learn what Theosophy is and what are its relations with Spiritualism. Let me say then, that in the sense given to it by those who first used it, the word means divine wisdom, or the knowledge of divine wisdom, or the knowledge of divine things… Essentially, a Theosophical Society is one which favours man’s original acquisition of knowledge about the hidden things of the universe by the education and perfecting of his own latent powers.”

Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) Union United States Army officer

Spiritualism and Theosophy (1880)

“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 (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

“As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 22, § 257 "On Thinking for Yourself" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms(1970) as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Variant translation: Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

“The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Variant translation: The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, clear, and well-defined will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. The main source of our ignorance lies in the fact that our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)
Context: The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance — the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

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Peter L. Berger 45

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