
“Understanding the limitations of human beings is the beginning of wisdom.”
Police Shootings
1980s–1990s, Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (1987)
Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information
“Understanding the limitations of human beings is the beginning of wisdom.”
Police Shootings
1980s–1990s, Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (1987)
AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN.
The White Luck Warrior (2011)
“It's self centered to think that human beings, as limited as we are, can describe divinity.”
The Quotable Sir John
Context: The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be. It's self centered to think that human beings, as limited as we are, can describe divinity.
“Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.”
Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 31 (p. 360)
Context: You had to form for yourself a lucid language for the world, to overcome the battering of experience, to replace everyday life’s pain and harshness and wretched dreariness with — no not with certainty but with an ignorance you could live with. Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.
The Roycraft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams (1923)
Source: The Roycroft Dictionary Concocted by Ali Baba and the Bunch on Rainy Days
“Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.”
Original German:Die Logik erfüllt die Welt; die Grenzen der Welt sind auch ihre Grenzen. Wir können also in der Logik nicht sagen: Das und das gibt es in der Welt, jenes nicht.Das würde nämlich scheinbar voraussetzen, dass wir gewisse Möglichkeiten ausschließen, und dies kann nicht der Fall sein, da sonst die Logik über die Grenzen der Welt hinaus müsste; wenn sie nämlich diese Grenzen auch von der anderen Seite betrachten könnte. Was wir nicht denken können, das können wir nicht denken; wir können also auch nicht sagen, was wir nicht denken können.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Context: Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. So we cannot say in logic, "The world has this in it, and this, but not that." For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well. We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either. (5.61)