Quotes about knowledge (4544 quotes, page 21)

“There are two suffixes in our language (and similar ones in other European languages) which suggest organized knowledge. One is the venerable, academic "ology," that reminds one of university curricula and scholarship. The other is the energetic and somewhat mysterious "ics," which has a connotative flavor of magic. Where "ology" suggests academic isolation (ichthyology, philology) "its" suggests a method of attack on life’s problems. It contains a faint throwback to the ancient dreams of the philosopher’s stone and of "keys" to the riddles of the universe. Ancient words ending in "ics" are mathematics and metaphysics. Of more recent origin are economics, statistics, semantics, and cybernetics.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

1950, p. 12 (1952, p. 123) lead paragraph
1950s, "What is Semantics?", 1950

Life , Dreams , Mathematics , Problem

“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.”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

Kilimandjaro (1852), Stanza 2; later published in The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor (1907), p. 73.

Truth , Soul , Nature , Light

“In this world, the question has already been asked. The world has already started to face the problems, the problems which are vital for the human race. There is no need to discuss the problems, but I would like to present my opinion. In the midst of all this, I still sincerely think that this Knowledge, the Knowledge of God, the Knowledge of our Creator, is our solution. Many people might not think so, and carry a completely different opinion, but my opinion is that since man came on this planet earth, he has always been taking from it. Remember, this planet Earth is not infinite, it is finite, and though it has a lot to give, it is limited. Maybe now we can somehow manage to stagger along, cutting our standards of living, cutting gas, reducing the speed limit more, but the next very terrifying question is What about the future? I think this Knowledge which I have to offer this world, free of charge, is the answer. For if everybody can understand that everybody is a brother and sister, and this world is a gift, not a human-owned planet, and have the true understanding of such, we'll definitely bring peace, tranquillity, love and Grace, which we need so badly. I urge this world to try. I do not claim to be God, but do claim I can establish peace on this Earth by our Lord's Grace, and everyone's joint effort.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Proclamation for 1975, signed Sant Ji Maharaj the name by which Prem Rawat was known at that time. Divine Times (Vol.4 Issue.1, February 1, 1975)
1970s

Love , God , People , World

“I’ve alway known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It’s essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don’t know.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 151

Love , Waiting , Sun , Selfishness

“Knowledge make us valuable. When we have knowledge that other people do not readily have, somebody need us. It does not matter what we look like, or where we came from, if we have something that others have a need for.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 212

People

“Luther's Qualifications. Luther had a rare combination of gifts for a Bible translator: familiarity with the original languages, perfect mastery over the vernacular, faith in the revealed word of God, enthusiasm for the gospel, unction of the Holy Spirit. A good translation must be both true and free, faithful and idiomatic, so as to read like an original work. This is the case with Luther's version. Besides, he had already acquired such fame and authority that his version at once commanded universal attention.
His knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was only moderate, but sufficient to enable him to form an independent judgment. What he lacked in scholarship was supplied by his intuitive genius and the help of Melanchthon. In the German tongue he had no rival. He created, as it were, or gave shape and form to the modern High German. He combined the official language of the government with that of the common people. He listened, as he says, to the speech of the mother at home, the children in the street, the men and women in the market, the butcher and various tradesmen in their shops, and, "looked them on the mouth," in pursuit of the most intelligible terms. His genius for poetry and music enabled him to reproduce the rhythm and melody, the parallelism and symmetry, of Hebrew poetry and prose. His crowning qualification was his intuitive insight and spiritual sympathy with the contents of the Bible.
A good translation, he says, requires "a truly devout, faithful, diligent, Christian, learned, experienced, and practiced heart."”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's competence as a Bible translator

Women , Men , God , Children

“Often it seems the more ‘scholarship’ one has, the less innovative one becomes. One can increasingly rest upon their knowledge of prior art to solve what looks like a new problem.”

Stephen F Bush

Bush, Stephen F., Keynote Speech, First IEEE International Conference on Communications 2012 Workshop on Telecommunications: From Research to Standards July 18, 2012.

Art , Problem

“When repeated experiments have failed, when every policy that has been proposed as a remedy for the ills of Ireland has been tried in succession and found wanting, is it not time to try some other experiment? I think the only experiment that can be tried is to make the Irish people masters of their own fortunes. Throw responsibility upon them, make them feel that it is to their interest to preserve law and order. Make them feel that the laws they are to obey are laws made by themselves, and that if they adopt a policy it will not be reversed by people sitting at Westminster, who have not that intimate knowledge of Irish conditions and wishes which can be possessed only by those who live in the midst of the people.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1921/dec/15/address-in-reply-to-his-majestys-most#column_112 in the House of Lords (15 December 1921).
1920s

People , Law , Feeling , Thinking

“Rid the mind of knowledge when looking for pleasure. Or start thinking and find a lot of pain.”

J. P. Donleavy (1926–2017) Novelist, playwright, essayist

The Saddest Summer of Samuel S (New York: Delacorte Press, 1966) pp. 62-3.

Pain , Pleasure , Thinking

“Self-knowledge can be painful, but not half so damaging as self-ignorance.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Pain

“The threat lies in the realization that in our universe the security of stable, permanent rules are gone forever. We are living in a dangerous and uncertain world that inspires no blind confidence. Our hope arises from the knowledge that even small fluctuations may grow and change the overall structure. As a result, individual activity is not doomed to insignificance”

Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) physical chemist

Source: Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (1984), p. 313; Cited in: K.C. Laszlo (2001) The Evolution of Business: Learning, Innovation, and Sustainability for the 21st century. p. 10.

World , Hope , Confidence , Universe

“The true foundation of all culture is the knowledge and understanding of water. Water is the ur-substance or ur-cause of all creation and for this reason is the ur-original accumulator, which readily absorbs both earthly and cosmic substances and conveys them to the body in a purely objective form. This must be done in such a way that the ur-attributes will in no way be modified and that change as such can only first come about in the effect, which the organically correctly structured body mediates and imparts. For this reason a good spirit dwells in a healthy body. Conversely a body full of vitality can be created, maintained and further developed by healing the inhering spirit.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger in 1936 - from Spec. Ed. Mensch und Technik, Vol. 2, 1993, section 4.1. (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Mensch und Technik

Way , Understanding , Water , Change

“Since Darwin, scientists have agreed that there is no ‘magical’ essential difference between human and other animals, biologically-speaking. Why then do we make an almost total distinction morally? If all organisms are on one physical continuum, then we should also be on the same moral continuum. … The only arguments in favour of painful experiments on animals are: 1) that the advancement of knowledge justifies all evils – well does it? 2) that possible benefits for our own species justify mistreatment of other species – this may be a fairly strong argument when it applies to experiments where the chances of suffering are minimal and the probability of aiding applied medicine is great, but even so it is still just ‘speciesism’, and as such it is a selfish emotional argument rather than a reasoned one.”

Richard D. Ryder (1940) British psychologist

" Speciesism https://books.google.it/books?id=Rz30CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT59" (1970). Reported in Speciesism, Painism and Happiness: A Morality for the Twenty-First Century by Richard D. Ryder (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2011), Chapter 2.

Pain , Strong , Suffering , Evil

“The struggles waged by nations are weak only when they lack support in the hearts of their women. But when women are moved and lend help, when women, who are by nature calm and controlled, give encouragement and applause, when virtuous and knowledgeable women grace the endeavor with their sweet love, then it is invincible.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

Love , Women , Support , Nature

“Nothing disturbs me more than superficiality and mere sloganizing on matters of public policy, and the suspicion that what the speaker is saying represents the full extent of his knowledge on the subject.”

Preston Manning book The New Canada

Source: The New Canada (1992), Chapter Fifteen, A New National Party, p. 281

“Many people today hold to a Gnostic view of things without realizing the fact. Believing that human beings can be fully understood in the terms of scientific materialism, they reject any idea of free will. But they cannot give up hope of being masters of their destiny. So they have come to believe that science will somehow enable the human mind to escape the limitations that shape its natural condition. Throughout much of the world, and particularly in western countries, the Gnostic faith that knowledge can give humans a freedom no other creature can possess has become the predominant religion.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: The Freedom of the Marionette (p. 9)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

People , World , Faith , Religion

“From all eternity I have indeed recognized Thee and unto all eternity will ever do so through Thine Own Self and not through any one else besides Thee. Verily Thou art the Source of all knowledge, the Omniscient. From everlasting I have besought and unto everlasting will beseech forgiveness for my limited understanding of Thee, aware as I am that there is no God but Thee, the All-Glorious, the Almighty.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to ‘Him Who Will Be Made Manifest’

God , Art , Forgiveness , Understanding

““Well, Lord, is the soul the same as the body, is the soul one thing and the body another?”
“I have not declared that the soul is one thing and the body another.”
“Well, Lord, does the Tathāgata exist after death?” …
“I have not declared that the Tathāgata exists after death.” …
“But, Lord, why has the Lord not declared these things?”
“Potthapada, that is not conducive to the purpose, not conducive to Dhamma, not the way to embark on the holy life; it does not lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to higher knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana. That is why I have not declared it.””

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 9, verse 28, p. 164
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Digha Nikaya (Long Discourses)

Life , Death , Way , Soul

“Deception is the knowledge of kings.”

Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) French clergyman, noble and statesman

Savoir dissimuler est le savoir des rois.
“Maxims,” Testament Politique (1641)

“Although he was an intelligent man, I don’t think that he was a supreme intelligence. He had a sense of having missed a university education. He was working when he was 17. It may have been his choice because his father was not a poor man. I would not, to say the least, call him a frank man. He talked about a great many things and then would occasionally reveal little anecdotal aspects of his own life. He was not interested in our becoming buddies. He was avid for knowledge, which he hoped I possessed, and which I tried to give the impression I did. I don’t have any notion whatever of being omniscient.”

Frederic Raphael (1931) British writer

Of Stanley Kubrick
Interview, http://www.tipjar.com/dan/raphael.htm

Life , Education , Hope , Intelligence

“History knew a midnight, which we may estimate at about the year 1000 A. D., when the human race lost the arts and sciences even to the memory. The last twilight of paganism was gone, and yet the new day had not begun. Whatever was left of culture in the world was found only in the Saracens, and a Pope eager to learn studied in disguise in their unversities, and so became the wonder of the West. At last Christendom, tired of praying to the dead bones of the martyrs, flocked to the tomb of the Saviour Himself, only to find for a second time that the grave was empty and that Christ was risen from the dead. Then mankind too rose from the dead. It returned to the activities and the business of life; there was a feverish revival in the arts and in the crafts. The cities flourished, a new citizenry was founded. Cimabue rediscovered the extinct art of painting; Dante, that of poetry. Then it was, also, that great courageous spirits like Abelard and Saint Thomas Aquinas dared to introduce into Catholicism the concepts of Aristotelian logic, and thus founded scholastic philosophy. But when the Church took the sciences under her wing, she demanded that the forms in which they moved be subjected to the same unconditioned faith in authority as were her own laws. And so it happened that scholasticism, far from freeing the human spirit, enchained it for many centuries to come, until the very possibility of free scientific research came to be doubted. At last, however, here too daylight broke, and mankind, reassured, determined to take advantage of its gifts and to create a knowledge of nature based on independent thought. The dawn of the day in history is know as the Renaissance or the Revival of Learning.”

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851) German mathematician

"Über Descartes Leben und seine Methode die Vernunft Richtig zu Leiten und die Wahrheit in den Wissenschaften zu Suchen," "About Descartes' Life and Method of Reason.." (Jan 3, 1846) C. G. J. Jacobi's Gesammelte werke Vol. 7 https://books.google.com/books?id=_09tAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA309 p.309, as quoted by Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930).

Life , World , Faith , Law

“The idea of an art world forms the backbone of my analysis. "Art world" is commonly used by writers on the arts in a loose and metaphoric way, mostly to refer to the most fashionable people associated with those newsworthy objects and events that command astronomical prices. I have used the term in a more technical way, to denote the the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that art world is noted for.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p.x.

People , World , Art , Way

“Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Lecture 1
Lectures on Education (1855)

“Revelation was not a necessitating motive of assent, but a means of information. We should not confound the way whereby we come to the knowledge of a thing with the grounds we have to believe it.”

John Toland book Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Section II: That the Doctrines of the Gospel are not contrary to Reason, Chapter 2

Way , Motivation

“There are two kinds of scholars: those who act on their knowledge, these are the saved ones; and those who do not put into practise what they know, these are led to their downfall.”

Ja'far al-Sadiq (702–765) Muslim religious person

Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol.1, p. 55
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

“One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable. There is no absolute knowledge and those who claim it, whether they are scientist or dogmatist, open the door to tragedy. All knowledge, all information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

World , Science

“In order to see the difference which exists between… studies,—for instance, history and geometry, it will be useful to ask how we come by knowledge in each. Suppose, for example, we feel certain of a fact related in history… if we apply the notions of evidence which every-day experience justifies us in entertaining, we feel that the improbability of the contrary compels us to take refuge in the belief of the fact; and, if we allow that there is still a possibility of its falsehood, it is because this supposition does not involve absolute absurdity, but only extreme improbability.
In mathematics the case is wholly different… and the difference consists in this—that, instead of showing the contrary of the proposition asserted to be only improbable, it proves it at once to be absurd and impossible. This is done by showing that the contrary of the proposition which is asserted is in direct contradiction to some extremely evident fact, of the truth of which our eyes and hands convince us. In geometry, of the principles alluded to, those which are most commonly used are—
I. If a magnitude is divided into parts, the whole is greater than either of those parts.
II. Two straight lines cannot inclose a space.
III. Through one point only one straight line can be drawn, which never meets another straight line, or which is parallel to it.
It is on such principles as these that the whole of geometry is founded, and the demonstration of every proposition consists in proving the contrary of it to be inconsistent with one of these.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Source: On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics (1831), Ch. I.

Truth , Feeling , History , Mathematics

“The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Evolution and Permanence of Type (1874)

Life , World , Way , Question

“Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education , Nature

“The newly emerging dominant group is "knowledge workers." The very term was unknown forty years ago. (I coined it in a 1959 book, Landmarks of Tomorrow.) By the end of this century knowledge workers will make up a third or more of the work force in the United States--as large a proportion as manufacturing workers ever made up, except in wartime. The majority of them will be paid at least as well as, or better than, manufacturing workers ever were. And the new jobs offer much greater opportunities.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

About the rise of the knowledge worker
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

Books

“Some 500,000 scientists all over the world are devoting their knowledge to the search for weaponry more sophisticated and more deadly.”

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1920) 5th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Stated reinforcing his warning to the United Nations. Cited in the article: Apocalypse—What Is It?, The Watchtower magazine, 2/15, 1986.

World , Search

“I never forgot that schooling had irretrievably changed my family’s life. That knowledge, however, did not weaken ambition. Instead, it strengthened resolve. Those times I remembered the loss of my past with regret, I quickly reminded myself of all the things my teachers could give me. (They could make me an educated man.) I tightened my grip on pencil and books. I evaded nostalgia. Tried hard to forget. But one does not forget by trying to forget. One only remembers. I remembered too well that education had changed my family’s life. I would not have become a scholarship boy had I not so often remembered.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Life , Books , Education , School

“If there is love, there is hope that one may have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue”

Tenzin Gyatso book The Little Book of Buddhism

The Little Book of Buddhism (2000) ISBN 0712602402

Love , Education , Family , Peace

“The present volume is intended as a systematic, theoretical treatise in the sociology of knowledge. It is not intended, therefore, to give a historical survey of the development of this discipline, or to engage in exegesis of various figures in this or other developments in sociological theory, or even to show how a synthesis may be achieved between several of these figures and developments. Nor is there any polemic intent here. Critical comments on other theoretical positions have been introduced (not in the text, but in the Notes) only where they may serve to clarify the present argument.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 7; Lead paragraph of preface

“The university is being called upon to educate previously unimagined numbers of students; to respond to the expanding claims of national service; to merge its activities with industry as never before. Characteristic of this transformation is the growth of the knowledge industry, which is coming to permeate government and business, and to draw into it more and more people raised to higher and higher levels of skill. The production, distribution and consumption of knowledge is said to account for 29 percent of gross national product, and knowledge production is growing at about twice the rate of the rest of the economy. What the railroads did for the second half of the last century, and the automobile for the first half of this century, may be done for the second half of this century by the knowledge industry; and that is, to serve as the focal point for national growth.”

Clark Kerr (1911–2003) American academic

David Lance Goines, 1993, The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960's, Ten Speed Press, p. 49.

People , Education , Business , Universe

“Jesus Christ is not a proposition, not a theological concept which exists merely in our heads. He is an event of liberation, a happening in the lives of oppressed people struggling for political freedom. Therefore, to know him is to encounter him in the history of the weak and the helpless. That is why it can be rightly said that there can be no knowledge of Jesus independent of the history and culture of the oppressed. It is impossible to interpret the Scripture correctly and thus understand Jesus aright unless the interpretation is done in the light of the consciousness of the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: God of the Oppressed (1975, 1997), p. 32

People , History , Understanding , Freedom

“Catilina in particular was one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age. His villanies belong to the criminal records, not to history; but his very outward appearance - the pale countenance, the wild glance, the gait by turns sluggish and hurried - betrayed his dismal past. He possessed in a high degree the qualities which are required in the leader of such a band - the faculty of enjoying all pleasures and of bearing all privations, courage, military talent, knowledge of men, the energy of a felon, and that horrible mastery of vice which knows how to bring the weak to fall, and how to train the fallen to crime.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 1, Translated by W.P. Dickson
On the Praetor Lucius Catilina
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Men , Pleasure , Age , History

“The first thing you see will be the two Cyanean Rocks, at the end of the straits. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever made his way between them, for not being fixed to the bottom of the sea they frequently collide, flinging up the water in a seething mass which falls on the rocky flanks of the straits with a resounding roar. Now if, as I take it, you are god-fearing travellers and men of sense, you will be advised by me: you will not rashly throw away your lives or rush into danger with the recklessness of youth. Make an experiment first. Send out a dove from Argo to explore the way. If she succeeds in flying in between the Rocks and out across the sea, do not hesitate to follow in her path, but get a firm grip on your oars and cleave the water of the straits. For that is the time when salvation will depend, not on your prayers, but on your strength of arm. So think of nothing else, be firm, and spend your energies on what will pay you best. By all means pray to the gods, but choose an earlier moment. And if the dove flies on, but comes to grief midway, turn back. It is always better to submit to heaven; and you could not possibly escape a dreadful end. The Rocks would crush you, even if Argo were an iron ship.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book II. Onward to Colchis, Lines 317–340

Men , God , Youth , Fear

“My father's education was altogether of the worst and most limited. I believe he was never more than three months at any school. What he learned there showed what he might have learned. A solid knowledge of arithmetic, a fine antique handwriting — these, with other limited practical etceteras, were all the things he ever heard mentioned as excellent. He had no room to strive for more.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Education , School , Learning

“The Englishman never enjoys himself except for a noble purpose. He does not play cricket because it is a good game, but because it creates good citizens. He does not love motor-races for their own sake, but for the advantages they bring to the engineering firms of his country. And it is common knowledge that the devoted persons who conduct and regularly attend horse-races do not do so because they like it, but for the benefit of the breed of the English horse.”

A. P. Herbert book Uncommon Law

"Is Fox-Hunting Fun?"
Uncommon Law (1935)

Love , Game , Horse , Personality

“A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

The Education of Women (1719)

Love , Peace , Angels , Way

“And now that Thou has restored to me the knowledge of Thyself, O Lord, let thy pardon fall on me, since Thy infinite mercy is not better known in anything than in pardoning a Dismas (the traditional name of the good thief) on the Cross and a Dominicus Corea on the gallows. If in Hell there is room for sinners, in Heaven also there is room for penitents.”

Dominicus Corea (1565–1596) King of Kotte and Sitawaka

The last address of King Dominicus Corea (Edirille Rala) on the gallows in Colombo before he was executed by the Portuguese - as quoted in:

Hell

“It is not possible to escape from the results of the irruption of faith into the structures of our knowledge.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Science and Wisdom (1954), p. 109.

Faith

“That blind attitude of the Society of Knowledge is similar in all to the proud consideration that "our language is better because it’s understood."
Just that with a completely tragic intensity, that could be translated like this: "our dead are true because they hurt."”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

"Collateral Effects" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HvdjRCajZU, from the book Words Can (2007) United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF]

Hurt , Dead

“Ideology … is therefore necessarily false; its social function is not to give agents a true knowledge of the social structure but simply to insert them as it were into their practical activities.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1990s, Ideology (1991), p. 136

Falseness

“If people realize the value of science and knowledge, they will sacrifice themselves for earning it.”

Ali Zayn al-Abidin (659–713) Great-grandson of the Prophet Muhammad

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.1, p. 183.

People , Science

“Having former knowledge and delight in Iron Works of my Fathers, when I was but a Youth; afterward at 20 years, Old, was I fetched from Oxford, then of Bayliol Colledge, Anno 1619, to look and manage 3 iron works of my fathers, 1 furnace, and 2 forges, in the Chase of Pensnet, in Worcester-shire, but Wood and Charcole, growing then scant, and Pit-coles in great quantities abounding near the furnace, did induce me to alter my furnace, and to attempt by my new invention, the making of iron with pit-cole, assuring myself in my invention, the loss to me could not be greater then others, not so great, "although my success should prove fruitless; but I found such success at first tryal animated me, for at my tryal or blast I made iron to profit with pit-cole, and found Facere est addere Invention!.”

Dud Dudley (1600–1684) British metallurgist

Source: Metallum Martis, 1665, p. 5 Cited in: Royal School of Mines (Great Britain) Records of the School of Mines and of Science Applied to the Arts, Vol. 1, (1852), p. 223.

Youth , Loss , Success , Animals

“Some bodies of knowledge emerge over time in a process of coevolution with the location in which they are embedded.”

Jonas Ridderstråle (1966) Swedish business theorist

Julian Birkinshaw, Robert Nobel, and Jonas Ridderstråle. "Knowledge as a contingency variable: do the characteristics of knowledge predict organization structure?." Organization science 13.3 (2002): 274-289.

Time

“The three things that lead men, by grace of God, to achieve all the good during this life and the next, are: to have the will to do everything virtuously and faithfully toward God and men; to have sufficient strength in their bodies and hearts to be able to do all difficult things and to oppose and cope with all adversities; and to be knowledgeable through experience of the things that belong their status and professions […]”

Bem Cavalgar (1391–1438) King of Portugal

Part I

Life , Men , God , Heart

“A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel
Variant: A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.

Love , Wisdom , Fate , World

“Where’s the next show?’, ‘Why don’t you make a Video?’, ‘Put on these beads and clothes and The Bling, Bling!’ Well, if that’s all it’s about than I think that I want out, of a career that won’t just let me sing. …‘cause music, faith and knowledge should be free.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"I Just Wanna Sing"
For Whom The Troubadour Sings (2010)

Faith , Music , Thinking , Singing

“Man alone, it seems, lives all his life in the knowledge of death. And yet there is more to life than merely waiting for death. For life to have meaning, there must be a purpose. A man must pass something on — otherwise he is useless.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 29

Life , Death , Waiting

“The descriptive sciences rely on skill and connoisseurship. At all these points the act of knowing includes an appraisal; and this personal coefficient, which shapes all factual knowledge, bridges in doing so the disjunction between subjectivity and objectivity. It implies the claim that man can transcend his own subjectivity by striving passionately to fulfil his personal obligations to universal standards.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 17

Universe , Passion , Science , Personality

“Ingenuity, knowledge, and organization alter but cannot cancel humanity's vulnerability to invasion by parasitic forms of life. Infectious disease which antedated the emergence of humankind will last as long as humanity itself, and will surely remain, as it has been hitherto, one of the fundamental parameters and determinants of human history.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6.

Life , Disease , History

“One cannot assert authority by accepting one's own fallibility. Simply, people need to be blinded by knowledge - we are made to follow leaders who can gather people together because the advantages of being in groups trump the disadvantages of being alone. It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 192

People , Personality

“Poverty, ignorance, illness and other problems of that kind are not metaphysical emergencies. By the metaphysical nature of man and of existence, man has to maintain his life by his own effort; the values he needs—such as wealth or knowledge—are not given to him automatically, as a gift of nature, but have to be discovered and achieved by his own thinking and work.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Life , Nature , Problem , Thinking

“When Sartre and I met not only did our backgrounds fuse, but also our solidity, our individual conviction that we were what we were made to be. In that framework we could not become rivals. Then, as the relationship between Sartre and me grew, I became convinced that I was irreplaceable in his life, and he in mine. In other words, we were totally secure in the knowledge that our relationship was also totally solid, again preordained, though, of course, we would have laughed at that word then. When you have such security it's easy not to be jealous. But had I thought that another woman played the same role as I did in Sartre's life, of course, I would have been jealous.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Interview by John Gerassi in Society (January-February 1976) http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/1976/interview.htm
General sources

Life

“I read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual.”

Baldur von Schirach (1907–1974) German Nazi leader convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trial

To Leon Goldensohn, March 10, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

World , Literature , Reading

“Tell you what, I've been through hundreds of battles. I've seen it all. Which country in the west have I not been to? Everywhere! You should know Mike Wallace, in the U. S. He's way above you all! He and I talked and laughed comfortably. Your media really need to raise your level of knowledge. Got it, or not? I'm anxious for you all, it's true.”

Jiang Zemin (1926) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

To Hong Konger reporters (2000), as quoted in "Rare Footage of Former China Leader Jiang Zemin Freak Out (With English Subs!)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GIj2BVJS2A (2013), China Uncensored.
2000s

Way , Country

“In seeking scientific understanding of the processes of information transfer we have had to go considerably outside the subject limits within which 'information science' as an academic subject is normally constrained… It has become increasingly clear that only by widening its “knowledge base” can information science establish a solid foundation for future development.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information Science in Theory and Practice (1987), p. v; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

Understanding , Science , Future

“I define the Soul as that which individualises the Universal Spirit, which focuses the Universal Light into a single point; which is, as it were, a receptacle into which is poured the Spirit; so that that which in Itself is universal, poured into this receptacle appears as separate, identical in its essence always but separated now in its manifestation; the purpose of this separation being that an individual may develop and grow; that there may be an individualised life potent on every plane in the Universe; that it may know on the physical and on the psychical planes as it knows on the spiritual, and have no break in consciousness of any kind; that it may make for itself the vehicles that it needs for acquiring consciousness beyond its own plane, and then may gradually purify them one by one until they no longer act as blinds or as hindrances, but as pure and translucent media through which all knowledge on every plane may come.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: https://theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/Annie%20Besant-In-The-Outer-Court.pdf In the Outer Court (1895)

Life , Soul , Light , Universe

“Whoever says that a man can live the Christian life, while at the same time successfully participating in the present order of things, is either profound in the lack of knowledge, or else he deliberately lies.”

George D. Herron (1862–1925) American clergyman, writer and activist

Source: Between Caesar and Jesus (1899), p. 26

Life , Time

“[The] contention that today's rich person is simply the winner of a "race that is open for anyone to enter" takes no account of inheritance or how we are equipped as we enter that race. It doesn't acknowledge that some approach the starting line in streamlined Lycra suits and track shoes, with full knowledge of the rules, a determined attitude and belief in their own abilities, not to mention a close friendship with those setting the rules and choosing the winner. Others, hungry from not having had a meal that day, barely make it to the starting line, don't really understand the purpose of the race or its rules, lack self-confidence and are full of hostility, and are convinced that those officials at the side of the track are actually cops waiting to bust them.”

Linda McQuaig (1951) journalist and author

All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

Friendship , Hostility , Shoe , Confidence

“The historian is not only a lover of truth, not only a chronicler of events. These, indeed, he must be at his peril, but how much more! Insight into human nature—and this implies the rarest knowledge and finest sympathy of which man is capable; the power of tracing the delicate relation between deed and motive, and the pressure of action upon circumstance and circumstance upon action; knowledge of the world, in short, in the highest sense of that expression.”

Henry Nettleship (1839–1893) British schoolteacher

Lectures and Essays https://archive.org/details/lecturesandessa00havegoog (1895), p. 245

Truth , World , Lovers , Motivation

“The fact that human evolution has been recent, copious and regional is not widely recognized, even though it has now been reported by many articles in the literature of genetics. The reason is in part that the knowledge is so new and in part because it raises awkward challenges to deeply held conventional wisdom.”

Nicholas Wade (1942) British writer

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014)

Wisdom , Literature , Parting

“Knowledge makes people special. Knowledge enriches life itself.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 207

Life , People

“What agents would choose in certain well- defined conditions of ignorance (in the “original position”) is, for Rawls, an important criterion for determining which conception of “justice” is normatively acceptable. Why should we agree that choice under conditions of ignorance is a good criterion for deciding what kind of society we would wish to have? William Morris in the late nineteenth century claimed to prefer a society of more or less equal grinding poverty for all (e. g., the society he directly experienced in Iceland) to Britain with its extreme discrepancies of wealth and welfare, even though the least well-off in Britain were in absolute terms better off than the peasants and fishermen of Iceland.” This choice seems to have been based not on any absolute preference for equality (or on a commitment to any conception of fairness), but on a belief about the specific social (and other) evils that flowed from the ways in which extreme wealth could be used in an industrial capitalist society.” Would no one in the original position entertain views like these? Is Morris’s vote simply to be discounted? On what grounds? The “veil of ignorance” is artificially defined so as to allow certain bits of knowledge “in” and to exclude other bits. No doubt it would be possible to rig the veil of ignorance so that it blanks out knowledge of the particular experiences Morris had and the theories he developed, and renders them inaccessible in the original position, but one would then have to be convinced that this was not simply a case of modifying the conditions of the thought experiment and the procedure until one got the result one antecedently wanted.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), pp. 87-88.

Justice , Way , Evil , Wealth

“The evil into which these philosophers have fallen is greater than that from which they sought to escape, because they refuse to say that God neglects or forgets a thing, and yet they maintain that His knowledge is imperfect, that He is ignorant of what is going on here on earth, that He does not perceive it.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.16

God , Evil , Forgetting

“God beareth Me witness, I was not a man of learning, for I was trained as a merchant. In the year sixty God graciously infused my soul with the conclusive evidences and weighty knowledge which characterize Him Who is the Testimony of God — may peace be upon Him — until finally in that year I proclaimed God’s hidden Cause and unveiled its well-guarded Pillar, in such wise that no one could refute it. ‘That he who should perish might perish with a clear proof before him and he who should live might live by clear proof.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Epistle to Muhammad Sháh

God , Peace , Soul , Learning

“No one, to my knowledge, has suggested that the image must accelerate and decelerate or that the relation among torque, angular momentum, and angular velocity has a,1 analogue in the mental rotation case. Of course it may tum our that it takes subjects longer to rotate an object that they imagine to be heavier, thus increasing the predictive value of the metaphor. But in that case it seems clearer that, even if it was predictive, the metaphor could nor be explanatory (surely, no one believes that some images are heavier than others and the heavier ones accelerate more slowly).”

Zenon Pylyshyn (1937) Canadian philosopher

Zenon W. Pylyshyn, "The rate of “mental rotation” of images: A test of a holistic analogue hypothesis." Memory & Cognition 7.1 (1979): 19-28; p. 19-20

Imagination

“Today, the countries that had kept up a civilised relationship with Modi despite the US’s strictures—these include Japan, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Israel[, ] and even China—are happy with the knowledge that their transition to a new regime will be extra smooth. Nor will the others who changed their tune midway feel disadvantaged. It is only the US that invested politically in the witch-hunt against Modi that feels seriously threatened.”

Swapan Dasgupta (1955) Indian politician, journalist and columnist

"A mighty fall from a moral high ground", 2014

Feeling , Change , Country , Happiness

“A sculpture, a map, a photograph; all the forms of my work are equal and complementary. The knowledge of my actions, in whatever form, is the art. My art is the essence of my experience, not a representation of it.”

Richard Long (1945) artist

Richard Long: Books, Prints, Printed Matter. Exhib cat New York Public Library, New York 1994
1990s

Art

“O Friend! Don't even speak of war. Get rid of atomic weapons.
Become immortal with the help of the treasure of camaraderie. Practice control over the senses, compassion and charity in your heart and in your actions.
By doing so, the humanity in you will rise even above divinity. Worship Lord Dattatreya, who is Bahudhari (one who possesses many aspects or one who is of the form of the tune 'Bahudhari'), the One who bestows auspiciousness and peace.
Experience Truth, Knowledge and Bliss and become exalted.”

Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji (1942) Indian guru

Jaya Jaya Bhuvi Divi Manava (2002)

War , Truth , Peace , Sense

“At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 12 (p. 116)

Question

“What keeps the world from reverting to the Neandertal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 28
Context: The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the Neandertal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.

World , Feeling , Understanding

“Failure to properly conceptualize the nature of knowledge assets condemns firms.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 2

Failure , Nature

“People will be truly critical if they live in the plenitude of the praxis, that is, if their action encompasses a critical reflection which increasingly organizes their thinking and thus leads them to move from a purely naive knowledge of reality to a higher level, one which enables them to perceive the causes of reality.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 4

People , Thinking , Reality

“[Boole's apparent goal was to] unfold the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and of ourselves is attained or matured, is a object which does not stand in need of commendation to a rational mind.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 3: as cited in: John Cohen (1966) A new introduction to psychology. p. 121

Secret , World , Law

“There is no difference between knowledge and devotion,
Both of them save the soul from the miseries of worldly life.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

Tulsidas's philosophical approach, quoted in "Hindu spirituality: Postclassical and modern", p. 80

Life , Soul

“Although it is obvious that people acquire useful skills and knowledge, it is not obvious that these skills and knowledge are a form of capital, that this capital is in substantial part a product of deliberate investment, that it has grown in Western societies at a much faster rate than conventional (nonhuman) capital, and that this growth may well be the most distinctive feature of the economic system.”

Theodore Schultz (1902–1998) American economist

Source: "Investment in human capital," 1961, p. 1

People , Parting

“Praise Him whose limit cannot be found.
They who practise truth and perform service shall obtain their reward.
He who knoweth divine knowledge is the learned pandit.
He who knoweth the one God in all creatures would never say 'I exist by myself '.
When the hair groweth white, it shineth without soap.
King Death's hunters follow him who is bound by the chain of mammon.
The Creator, Lord of the world, giveth sustenance to His slaves.
All the world is bound in His bonds; no other authority prevaileth.
He who hath renounced the singing of God's word, is arrogant in his language.
He who fashioned vessels made kilns in which He put them and burnt them.
The servant who performeth the Guru's work, who remaineth obedient to His commands,
Who deemeth bad and good as the same, shall in this way be absorbed in Him.
He who made the four Veds, the four mines, and the four ages
Hath been in every age a Jogi, a worldly man, or a learned pandit.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Life Of Guru Nanak: Chapter I

Death , God , Truth , Age

“Diogenes the cynic, seeing one of the so-called freedmen pluming himself, while many heartily congratulated him, marveled at the absence of reason and discernment. “A man might as well,” he said, “proclaim that one of his servants became a grammarian, a geometrician, or musician, when he has no idea whatever of the art.” For as the proclamation cannot make them men of knowledge, so neither can it make them free.”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Philo, Every Good Man is Free, F. Colson, trans. (1941), 157
Quoted by Philo

Men , Art , Idea

“Because it seems inseparable from the social idea and we do not believe that there could ever exist a state with lasting inner health if it is not built on internal social justice, and so we have joined forces with this knowledge.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

"Why We Are Anti-Semites," August 15, 1920 speech in Munich at the Hofbräuhaus. Translated from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 16. Jahrg., 4. H. (Oct., 1968), pp. 390-420. Edited by Carolyn Yeager. https://carolynyeager.net/why-we-are-antisemites-text-adolf-hitlers-1920-speech-hofbr%C3%A4uhaus
1920s

Health , Justice , Idea

“Not a single muscle quivered
On his radiantly evil face.
Oh, I know: his delight
Is the tense and passionate knowledge
That he needs nothing,
That I can refuse him nothing.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

The Guest (1914)

Passion , Evil

“There will always be people who are ahead of the curve, and people who are behind the curve. But knowledge moves the curve.”

Bill James (1949) American baseball writer and statistician

The Mind of Bill James, 2006, p. 191

People

“I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? —

Its snaky acids hiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults,
That kill, that kill, that kill.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"Elm"
Ariel (1965)

“Most Christians know next to nothing about the life and teachings of Christ and are afraid to learn, sensing that the knowledge will upset their preconceptions.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"Sun of Helioscope", in Castle of the Otter (1982), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Life , Sense , Learning , Christ

“Socrates gave no diplomas or degrees, and would have subjected any disciple who demanded one to a disconcerting catechism on the nature of true knowledge.”

George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876–1962) Historian

History of England http://books.google.com/books?id=6hUTAQAAIAAJ&q="Socrates+gave+no+diplomas+or+degrees+and+would+have+subjected+any+disciple+who+demanded+one+to+a+disconcerting+catechism+on+the+nature+of+true+knowledge" (1960).

Nature

“At this point water-tight compartments of university specialization and theories founded on the selected isolation of facts easily break down. Specialized thinking is rarely a sufficient foundation for concrete decisions involving action. The social scientist cannot often form sound administrative judgments solely on the basis of elements which he has picked out simply because they relate directly to his particular specialty. The present emphasis on artificial subdivisions of knowledge and on specialized thinking and teaching in universities, technical schools, and colleges and the relative neglect of administrative problems involving action have a dangerously narrowing effect on graduates of these institutions. While we may and frequently do arouse the intellectual interest of students in a considerable variety of subjects intimately related to the civilization of which they are a part, we pay almost no attention to the web of cross ties among these subjects.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

Source: "Training for Leadership in a Democracy", 1936, p. 65-70, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 663

School , Problem , Thinking , Decision

“Patanjali is considered the father of the yoga. On reality as far as we know, he was a yogi and polymath living around the fifth century BC, India, who collated and elaborated knowledge of the yogis’ life and practices. He wrote the Yoga Sutras, lierally a thread of aphorisms about yoga, consciousness and the human condition. Patanjali also explained the relationship between the natural world and the innermost and transcendent soul…. What Patanjali said applies to me and will apply to you.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.x-xi

Life , World , Soul , Nature

“Rise again
Rise again
That her name not be lost to the knowledge of men.”

Stan Rogers (1949–1983) Folk singer

The Mary Ellen Carter (1979)

Men

“For the women who mourn their dead in the secret night,
For the children taught to keep quiet, the old children,
The children spat-on at school.
For the wrecked laboratory,
The gutted house, the dunged picture, the pissed-in well
The naked corpse of Knowledge flung in the square
And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

Women , Children , Secret , School

“So whether information represents one man's sentimental archive, the accumulating knowledge base of the human-machine civilization, or the mind files stored in our brains, what can we conclude about the ultimate longevity of software? The answer is simply this: Information lasts only so long as someone cares about it. The conclusion that I've come […] is that there is no set of hardware and software standards existing today, nor any likely to come along, that will provide any reasonable level of confidence that the stored information will still be accessible […] decades from now.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

Source: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005), p. 329

Confidence

“The sheer increase in the quantity of information movement favoured the visual organization of knowledge and the rise of perspective even before typography.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 128

“If you want to know what Churches were made for, come down here on some great festival of the Virgin; but come alone! That kind of knowledge cannot be taught and can seldom be shared. We are not now seeking religion; indeed, true religion generally comes unsought. We are trying only to feel gothic art. For us the world is not a schoolroom or a pulpit, but a stage, and the stage is the highest yet seen on earth. In this church the old romanesque leaps into the gothic under our eyes; of a sudden, between the portal and the shrine, the infinite rises into a new expression, always a rare and excellent miracle in thought.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

World , Religion , Art , Feeling

“I spent a lot of time teaching myself theory and harmony so I could be free to express myself on the instrument. I learned what relatives and substitutes could be played against a root of a chord, like E minor related to G, and so forth. I've also gathered all this knowledge because for ten years all I've done is play jazz, every day.”

George Benson (1943) American musician

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 115, 0-679-74275-1]

Learning , Time

“In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law — in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

"The Day the Gods Stopped Laughing," unpublished article written in the late 60's, quoted in To The High Castle: Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962 (1989) by Gregg Rickman

Law , Science

“This paper reports on a comparative case study of 13 industrial firms that implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. It compares firms based on their dialectic leaming process. All firms had to overcome knowledge barriers of two types: those associated with the configuration of the ERP package, and those associated with the assimilation of new work processes. We found that both strong core teams and carefully managed consulting relationships addressed configuration knowledge barriers. User training that included both technical and business processes, along with a phased implementation approach, helped firms to overcome assimilation knowledge barriers. However, all firms in this study experienced ongoing concerns with assimilation knowledge barriers, and we observed two different approaches to address them. In a piecemeal approach, firms concentrated on the technology first and deferred consideration of process changes. In a concerted approach, both the technology and process changes were undertaken together. Although most respondents clearly stated a preference for either piecemeal or concerted change, all firms engaged in practices that reflected a combination of these approaches.”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

Abstract, p. 17-18
Learning to implement enterprise systems (2002)

Business , Study , Strong , Change