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Ultimately you want to have the entire world's knowledge connected directly to your mind.
SERGEY BRIN, Playboy, Sep. 2004
All knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom.
There's so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.
ISAAC ASIMOV, Prelude to Foundation
Although humans have existed on this planet for perhaps 2 million years, the rapid climb to modern civilization within the last 200 years was possible due to the fact that the growth of scientific knowledge is exponential; that is, its rate of expansion is proportional to how much is already known. The more we know, the faster we can know more. For example, we have amassed more knowledge since World War II than all the knowledge amassed in our 2-million-year evolution on this planet. In fact, the amount of knowledge that our scientists gain doubles approximately every 10 to 20 years.
- He that knew all that ever Learning writ,
- Knew only this -- that he knew nothing yet.
APHRA BEHN, The Emperor of the Moon
I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
RICHARD FEYNMAN, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman
Everybody knows something, and nobody knows everything.
DUSTY BAKER, Esquire, Apr. 2004
In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good.
We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers… one saying to the other: "you don't know what you are talking about!". The second one says: "what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?"
RICHARD FEYNMAN, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I, 8-2
How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.
MARY SHELLEY, Frankenstein
I should not like to say ... that any kind of knowledge is not to be learned; for all knowledge appears to be a good.
- Knowledge forbidden?
- Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
- Envy them that? Can it be sin to know,
- Can it be death? And do they only stand
- By ignorance? Is that their happy state,
- The proof of their obedience and their faith?
- O fair foundation laid whereon to build
- Their ruin!
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
Those who have knowledge are more confident than those who have no knowledge, and they are more confident after they have learned than before.
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