Knowledge
Quotes - Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action
“You
could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his
being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not
only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper
understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after
Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.
I'm
not saying you're more intelligent than Aristotle, or wiser. For all I know,
Aristotle's the cleverest person who ever lived. That's not the point. The
point is only that science is cumulative, and we live later.”
―
Richard Dawkins
“Give
me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of
ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of
the fruit of the tree of knowledge!”
―
Robert G. Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll
“Nobody
is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding
doing you?”
―
Terence McKenna
“Where
is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where
is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
―
T.S. Eliot, The Rock
“Religion
can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be
free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the
future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence,
to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and
dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget
purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once
more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see
again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming
years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your
veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of
your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to
reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing,
that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things,
to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that
join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the
weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul.
This is real religion. This is real worship”
―
Robert Green Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. IV
“We
are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose
them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let
ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end
before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are
those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are
still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
―
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
“But
need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.”
―
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
“Knowledge
is a better weapon than a sword.”
―
Patricia Briggs, Raven's Shadow
“Nothing
can illustrate these observations more forcibly, than a recollection of the
happy conjuncture of times and circumstances, under which our Republic assumed
its rank among the Nations; The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the
gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of
mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former
period, the researches of the human mind, after social happiness, have been
carried to a great extent, the Treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labours
of Philosophers, Sages and Legislatures, through a long succession of years,
are laid open for our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in
the Establishment of our forms of Government; the free cultivation of Letters,
the unbounded extension of Commerce, the progressive refinement of Manners, the
growing liberality of sentiment... have had a meliorating influence on mankind
and increased the blessings of Society. At this auspicious period, the United
States came into existence as a Nation, and if their Citizens should not be
completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own.
[Circular
to the States, 8 June 1783 - Writings 26:484--89]”
―
George Washington, Writings
“Only
two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at
all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with
thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures
and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing.”
―
Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Ramakrishna
“The
true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.”
―
Isaac Asimov
“He
who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”
―
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I
am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.”
―
Thomas Henry Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley
“I
had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the
loss”
―
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“Our
indigenous herbalists say to pay attention when plants come to you; they’re
bringing you something you need to learn.”
―
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific
Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
“The
night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger
values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting
and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to
show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I
decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been
better--but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care.
I
asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished
hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized
religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person,
and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a
responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking,
and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends,
if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat,
or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if
there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I
would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed
in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at
the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so
you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know
what? You're right. Fine.'
I
believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in
that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's
someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an
experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in
the hard currency of his intelligence and his research.
Beyond
that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and
science. But I knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake.
To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the
contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it
every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is
one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when
all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that
there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery.
To
continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the
treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most
important thing, I decided. It had to be.
Without
belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single
day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight
every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily
against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these
were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium
doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and
inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit.
So,
I believed.”
―
Lance Armstrong, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
