“When we know clearly, then should we discuss:
To guess is one thing, and to know another.”

Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 1368–1369 (tr. E. H. Plumptre)

Original

Σάφ' εἰδότας χρὴ τῶνδε θυμοῦσθαι πέρι· τὸ γὰρ τοπάζειν τοῦ σάφ' εἰδέναι δίχα.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When we know clearly, then should we discuss: To guess is one thing, and to know another." by Aeschylus?
Aeschylus photo
Aeschylus 119
ancient Athenian playwright -525–-456 BC

Related quotes

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“If we did but know how we rush into one evil while seeking to avoid another, we should have no resolution to shun any thing.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Julian of Norwich photo

“Our Lord God shewed two manner of secret things. One is this great Secret with all the privy points that belong thereto: and these secret things He willeth we should know hid until the time that He will clearly shew them to us.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 34
Context: Our Lord God shewed two manner of secret things. One is this great Secret with all the privy points that belong thereto: and these secret things He willeth we should know hid until the time that He will clearly shew them to us. The other are the secret things that He willeth to make open and known to us; for He would have us understand that it is His will that we should know them. They are secrets to us not only for that He willeth that they be secrets to us, but they are secrets to us for our blindness and our ignorance; and thereof He hath great ruth, and therefore He will Himself make them more open to us, whereby we may know Him and love Him and cleave to Him. For all that is speedful for us to learn and to know, full courteously will our Lord shew us.

Dan Fogelberg photo

“She says no
When she means yes
And what she wants
You know that I can't guess.
When we want more
You know we ask for less
Such is the language of love…”

Dan Fogelberg (1951–2007) singer-songwriter, musician

The Language of Love.
Song lyrics, Windows and Walls (1984)

Beth Gutcheon photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Jim Butcher photo
Theodore Roszak photo

“When it is another human being who is being… objectified, everybody (except the rapist) can clearly see the act as a crime. But when we objectify the natural world, turning it into a dead or stupid thing, we have another word for that. Science.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Source: The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999), Ch.7 The Rape of Nature

Hesiod photo

“We know how to speak many falsehoods which resemble real things, but we know, when we will, how to speak true things.”

Hesiod Greek poet

We know to tell many fictions like to truths, and we know, when we will, to speak what is true.
We know how to tell many lies that pass for truth, and we know, when we wish, to tell the truth itself.
Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), lines 27–28. Variant translations:

Richard Feynman photo

“In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another. The great problems of the relations between one and another aspect of human activity have for this reason been discussed less and less in public.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

remarks (2 May 1956) at a Caltech YMCA lunch forum http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/49/2/Religion.htm
Context: In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another. The great problems of the relations between one and another aspect of human activity have for this reason been discussed less and less in public. When we look at the past great debates on these subjects we feel jealous of those times, for we should have liked the excitement of such argument. The old problems, such as the relation of science and religion, are still with us, and I believe present as difficult dilemmas as ever, but they are not often publicly discussed because of the limitations of specialization.

Donald Rumsfeld photo

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or vice versa.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

Department of Defense news briefing (12 February 2002)
Variant:
Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.
:It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter.
:There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist. And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.
:* Extending on his earlier comments in a press conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium (6 June 2002) http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2002/s020606g.htm
2000s

Related topics