“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”

— John Adams

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Source: The Works Of John Adams, Second President Of The United States
Context: Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.

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2nd President of the United States 1735–1826

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“Great change can only be effected by unity. But "Union without knowledge is useless; Knowledge without union is powerless." Then what is the right knowledge? Owen said it consisted in knowing that people came into the world without any intention of doing it; and often with limited capacities, and with disadvantages of person, and with instinctive tendencies which impel them against their will, and which disqualifications they did not give themselves…. Dislike dies in the heart of those who understand this, and the spirit of unity arises.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

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“Wisdom is, I suppose, the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Fourfold Treasure (1871) No. 991 http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0991.htm

“This paper analyzes the relations between knowledge, control and organizational structure both in the market system as a whole and in private organizations. Limitations on the mental capacity of the human mind and the costs of producing and transferring knowledge means that knowledge relevant to all decisions can never be collected in the mind of a single individual or a small body of experts. This means that if the knowledge valuable to a particular decision is to be used in making that decision, there must be a system for partitioning out decision rights to individuals who already have the relevant knowledge and abilities or who can acquire or produce them at the lowest cost. Self interest on the part of individual decision-makers means a control system is required to motivate individuals with the decision rights and the relevant knowledge to use those decision rights appropriately. This control problem is solved in a capitalist economy by a system of alienable property rights.”

Michael Jensen (1939) American economist

Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling. "Specific and general knowledge and organizational structure." (1992).

“The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.”

Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Fragment 5, as translated by G. W. T. Patrick
Numbered fragments
Source: Clement, Stromates, II, 8, 1

“And since every man retains, and can never be deprived of his natural right (founded on a regard to the general good) of relieving himself from all oppression, that is, from every thing that has been imposed upon him without his own consent; this must be the only true and proper foundation of all the governments subsisting in the world, and that to which the people who compose them have an unalienable right to bring them back.”

Joseph Priestley book Essay on the First Principles of Government

Section II, "Of Political Liberty"
Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd Edition (1771)

“No one has a monopoly of the true God, nor is there a nation or religion that can claim, or at any rate prove, that it has been given the exclusive right to the Creator or sole knowledge of His Being.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Annotations to Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas - translated by Austin Craig

“A nation of well-informed men, who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them, cannot be enslaved.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Written by Henry Stuber as part of a biographical sketch of Franklin appended to a 1793 edition of Franklin's autobiography and sometimes reprinted with it in the 19th century. It is frequently misattributed to Franklin himself.
Misattributed
Context: Libraries … will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men, who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them, cannot be enslaved. It is in the regions of ignorance that tyranny reigns.

“Perfect knowledge of such things cannot be acquired without divine inspiration, given that all prophetic inspiration derives its initial origin from God Almighty, then from chance and nature.”

Nostradamus book Les Propheties

Les Propheties (1555), Preface
Context: Perfect knowledge of such things cannot be acquired without divine inspiration, given that all prophetic inspiration derives its initial origin from God Almighty, then from chance and nature. Since all these portents are produced impartially, prophecy comes to pass partly as predicted. For understanding created by the intellect cannot be acquired by means of the occult, only by the aid of the zodiac, bringing forth that small flame by whose light part of the future may be discerned. We need god to prosper those without him will not.

“Because knowledge is power, every hegemonic power challenged by “another knowledge” must try to stay in the center of knowledge. However, not every power is the right center for every knowledge. Reflective knowledge cannot be separated from its subject.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 77

“Thought from which no emotion springs is sterile. The knowledge that has no bearing on the conduct of life is vain.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 243

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