What the Bee Knows : Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)
Context: The Sphinx, the Pyramids, the stone temples are, all of them, ultimately, as flimsy as London Bridge; our cities but tents set up in the cosmos. We pass. But what the bee knows, the wisdom that sustains our passing life — however much we deny or ignore it — that for ever remains.
“Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.”
14 December 1756
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
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Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield 65
British statesman and man of letters 1694–1773Related quotes
In "Gods", ADAM International Review, No. 299 (1962)
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.
1950s, Address at the Philadelphia Convention Hall (1956)
BBC (2 December 2014) http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540
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The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)