Famous Quotes & Sayings

Bertrand Russell

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power

Richard P. Feynman

A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.

Samuel Johnson

Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.

Salvador Dali

All of my knowledge, of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my painting.

Robert Southey

Our knowledge, is our power, and God our strength.

Robert Penn Warren

The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.

Robert M. Pirsig

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.

Rod Stewart

I wish I knew what I know now before.

Rudyard Kipling

He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.

Richard P. Feynman

I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.

Richard P. Feynman

Unless a thing can be defined by measurement, it has no place in a theory. And since an accurate value of the momentum of a localized particle cannot be defined by measurement it therefore has no place in the theory.

Richard P. Feynman

It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.

Richard P. Feynman

Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgments can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.

Richard P. Feynman

Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.

Richard P. Feynman

If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.

Richard Whately

To teach one who has no curiosity to learn, is to sow a field without ploughing it.

William S. Burroughs

They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.

Woody Allen

Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things.

Frank Wood

He was the kind of guy, when things were down, he brightened them up. He was happy-go-lucky ... and that light shone around him all the time.

Richard Posner

The Constitution has to be interpreted loosely, otherwise it becomes a straitjacket. You can't interpret it literally. You can pretend to, and go digging around in 18th Century dictionaries to figure out what 'cruel and unusual punishment' meant or what the 'right to bear arms' meant, but that is all fake really. The Constitution has to be interpreted in light of modern needs, and that's what they (the strict interpreters) end up doing in spite of all their investigations.

William Jennings Bryan

The money power denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.

Virginia Woolf

She dares me to pour myself out like a living waterfall. She dares me to enter the soul that is more than my own; she extinguishes fear in mere seconds. She lets light come through.

Woody Allen

What advice would I give the average homeowner to protect himself against burglars? Well, the first thing is to keep a light on in the house when you go out. It must be at least a sixty-watt bulb; anything less and the burglar will ransack the house, out of contempt for the wattage.

Woody Allen

When you are dead, it is hard to find the light switch.

Robert Delaunay

Light comes to us by the sensibility. Without visual sensibility there is no light, no movement.

Rob Bell

You turn the light on, you get all kinds of bugs.

Richard Cobden

I took the repeal of the Corn Laws as light amusement compared with the difficult task of inducing the priests of all denominations to agree to suffer the people to be educated.