
Knowledge is Power
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
1860s, Last public address (1865)
Knowledge is Power
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
In Amrita Ghosh, Author in Focus: An Interview with Dalrymple http://www.cerebration.org/dalrymple.html, Cerebration.Org.
Letter to Dr. David Feuchtwang (1931), as quoted in Freud and Moses: The Long Journey Home (1990) by Emanuel Rice, p. 25
1930s
Original in German: Ich übe mich an Spinoza, ich lese und lese ihn wieder, und erwarte mit Verlangen biß der Streit über seinen Leichnam losbrechen wird. Ich enthalte mich alles Urtheils doch bekenne ich, daß ich mit Herdern in diesen Materien sehr einverstanden bin.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in one of his letters to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, 1785
G - L, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“This much will I say for myself — and on this point I do not blush for praising myself — that I have never philosophized save for the sake of philosophy, nor have I ever desired or hoped to secure from my studies and my laborious researches any profit or fruit save cultivation of mind and knowledge of the truth — things I esteem more and more with the passage of time. I have also been so avid for this knowledge and so enamored of it that I have set aside all private and public concerns to devote myself completely to contemplation; and from it no calumny of jealous persons, nor any invective from enemies of wisdom has ever been able to detach me.”
Dabo hoc mihi, et me ipsum hac ex parte laudare nihil erubescam, me numquam alia de causa philosophatum nisi ut philosopharer, nec ex studiis meis, ex meis lucubrationibus, mercedem ullam aut fructum vel sperasse alium vel quesiisse, quam animi cultum et a me semper plurimum desideratae veritatis cognitionem. Cuius ita cupidus semper et amantissimus fui ut, relicta omni privatarum et publicarum rerum cura, contemplandi ocio totum me tradiderim; a quo nullae invidorum obtrectationes, nulla hostium sapientiae maledicta, vel potuerunt ante hac, vel in posterum me deterrere poterunt.
25. 158-159; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)
“As for myself, I report more things than I believe; for I cannot bring myself to vouch for that which I am in doubt, nor to suppress what I have heard.”
Equidem plura transcribo quam credo; nam nec affirmare sustineo de quibus dubito, nec subducere quae accepi.
IX, 1, 34; translation by John Carew Rolfe
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book IX
Hubble's reply when asked about his beliefs from a friend, as quoted in Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae (1996) by Gale E. Christianson, p. 183.