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Knowledge QUOTES

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* The end of the Cold War removed the immediate causes of whole destruction -- but not the threat contained in our knowledge. We must tame this knowledge with the ideals of justice, caring, and compassion summoned from our common human spiritual and moral heritage, if we are to live in peace and serenity in the twenty-first century.
-- Mahnaz Afkhami

 

* If the entire history of mankind were condensed into a single year, our knowledge of how to destroy life on earth with weapons of mass destruction has been acquired in the last thirty seconds. Never again will we lack the knowledge to eliminate the world in a single act of madness. Therefore, we are faced with a dilemma unique in our history. We must not only control the weapons that can kill us, we must bridge the great disparities of wealth and opportunity among the peoples of the world, the vast majority of whom live in poverty without hope, opportunity or choices in life. These conditions are a breeding ground for division that can cause a desperate people to resort to nuclear weapons as a last resort. Our only hope lies in the power of our love, generosity, tolerance and understanding and our commitment to making the world a better place for all...
-- Muhammad Ali

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family."
~ Kofi Annan

Acquiring literacy is an empowering process, enabling millions to enjoy access to knowledge and information which broadens horizons, increases opportunities and creates alternatives for building a better life.
~ Kofi Annan

"Microfinance recognizes that poor people are remarkable reservoirs of energy and knowledge. And while the lack of financial services is a sign of poverty, today it is also understood as an untapped opportunity to create markets, bring people in from the margins and give them the tools with which to help themselves."
~ Kofi Annan
The saddest aspect of life right now
is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
-- Isaac Asimov
"Good nature is worth more than knowledge,
more than money, more than honor..."
-- Henry Ward Beecher

Everyone has a transferable commodity-knowledge.
Sharing your unique expertise and making introductions for someone creates a lasting legacy.
Marsha Blackburn

To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.”
-- William S. Boroughs

* It has long been recognized that an essential element in protecting human rights was a widespread knowledge among the population of what their rights are and how they can be defended. 
-- Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Sixth UN Secretary-General, 1992-1996

I have repeatedly stressed that we have the knowledge
to reduce hunger and poverty.
-- Gro Harlem Brundtland

* "We can use our scientific knowledge to improve and beautify the earth, or we can use it to ...poison the air, corrupt the waters, blacken the face of the country, and harass our souls with loud and discordant noises, [or]...we can use it to mitigate or abolish all these things."
~ John Burroughs

If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.
-- Rachel Carson

Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others.
- Confucius

Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.
-- Peter F. Drucker

* Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein

The only source of knowledge is experience.
-- Albert Einstein

* It is the supreme art of the teacher
to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge
of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
-- Albert Einstein

...our civilization, so addicted to knowledge, has fled from wisdom. Knowledge is very, very powerful. If it is not tempered and contoured by greater visions, like justice, compassion, beauty, grace and thinking of the next generation and seven generations to come -- then indeed, it is dangerous. Unfortunately, many of our educational systems in the West are still very dangerous places." -- Matthew Fox

* "If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it."
-- Margaret Fuller

 

Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils.
-- Eve Garrison

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.
-- Kahlil Gibran

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
-- George Gurdjieff

You can practice to attain knowledge, but you can't practice to attain wisdom.
-- Herbie Hancock

* Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
-- Jimi Hendrix

"Without mutual knowledge there can be no mutual understanding; without understanding, there can be no trust and respect; without trust, there can be no peace, only the danger of conflict. This means we have to be willing and able to familiarize ourselves with the way people of other cultures think and perceive the world around them, but without losing our own standpoint in the process."
-- Roman Herzog, President of Germany

"A generation that acquires knowledge without ever understanding
how that knowledge can benefit the community
is a generation that is not learning what it means to be citizens in a democracy."
-- Elizabeth L. Hollander (1817-1885)

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.
~ Aldous Huxley

"I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people. I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false. But this knowledge does not outweigh the fact that my class, the working class, is exploited, driven, fought back with the weapon of starvation, with guns and with venal courts whenever they strike for conditions more human, more civilized for their children, and for their children's children."
-- Mother Jones

* "Across the world women are joining hands in solidarity and support, in a global women’s movement, sharing knowledge and experience and empowering themselves to build a peaceful and fairer world."
-- Marilee Karl

"Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we posses. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victim."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

Remember that consciousness is power. Consciousness is education and knowledge. Consciousness is becoming aware. It is the perfect vehicle for students. Consciousness-raising is pertinent for power, and be sure that power will not be abusively used, but used for building trust and goodwill domestically and internationally. Tomorrow's world is yours to build.
-- Yuri Kochiyama

The best prescription is knowledge.
-- C. Everett Koop

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.
-- John Locke

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
-- John Locke

We will forever live with the danger of nuclear weapons because the nuclear genie has been let out of the bottle. Knowledge cannot be erased once it arrives. That’s the nature of ideas, that’s the nature of scientific advancement, and that’s the nature of widening the horizon of human understanding. The point is that you have to learn to live with the world that has been created, but to do this we must structure a society that is less asymmetric and more equal. We must find a way to make sure that the fruits produced by the world are enjoyed equally. That doesn’t mean everybody will be equal, but that people will not feel constantly cheated out of their patrimony, or their God-given rights like shelter, food, health, and education and therefore not be denied their human potential. The International Declaration of Human Rights says the right to housing, health, education should be guaranteed to everyone. The moment these things are provided, we will have a different world order and nuclear weapons will become less of a threat. -- Bernard Lown

* One of the marks of a great teacher lies not only in an ability to impart knowledge but also in knowing when to encourage a student to go off on his own.
-- Yo-Yo Ma

We frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too.
-- Mairead Corrigan Maguire

We come to know ourselves, then, through coming to know each other.
And the deeper that knowledge, the richer and more creative the world we build together."
-- Danny Martin, Director of ICRE (International Communities for the Renewal of the Earth)

There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves,
that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet.
~ Brooke Medicine Eagle

"Literacy is not, as it is considered in our schools, a PORTION of education. It IS education. It is at once the ability AND the inclination of the mind to find knowledge, to pursue understanding, and out of knowledge and understanding, not out of received attitudes and values or emotional responses, however worthy, to make judgments."
-- Richard Mitchell

 

In my mind, the purpose of education is to enable human beings to develop to their full potential, intellectually and spiritually. That means that students have to be empowered to pursue self-knowledge and the skills that will help them be of service to their fellow human beings. Education should encourage people to develop their curiosity about life; above all, it should not trivialize either the students or their lives.
-- Michael Nagler

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
- Plato

"We are moved to deep humility by the knowledge that even as we are blazing new trails into an as yet uncharted future, we are following in the footsteps of a vast legacy of spiritual leaders and social change makers. The struggle for justice is as old as tyranny itself, and the longing for a world guided by love is as old as the human heart. Thank you for joining us in carrying the great dream forward through the next generation."
~ Ocean Robbins

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
-- Carl Sagan

 

"Necessity is the mother of invention, it is true, but its father is creativity, and knowledge is the midwife"
-- Jonathan Schattke

* Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.
~ E. F. Schumacher

Any classification according to a singular identity polarizes people in a particular way, but if we take note of the fact that we have many different identities - related not just to religion but also to language, occupation and business, politics, class and poverty, and many others - we can see that the polarization of one can be resisted by a fuller picture. So knowledge and understanding are extremely important to fight against singular polarization.
-- Amartya Sen

* Poverty and lack of knowledge must be challenged.
-- Russell Simmons

* “A real medicine can only exist when it penetrates into a knowledge which embraces the human being in respect to body, soul and spirit.”
-- Rudolf Steiner

* There's an awful lot of misunderstanding here about what being poor actually means. I don't think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there's some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything. It is remarkable how many misconceptions there are here about life in the developing world and I think that that knowledge gap has done a lot to contribute to the imbalance quite frankly.
-- Emma Thompson

"Literacy arouses hopes, not only in society as a whole but also in the individual who is striving for fulfilment, happiness and personal benefit by learning how to read and write. Literacy... means far more than learning how to read and write... The aim is to transmit... knowledge and promote social participation."
-- UNESCO Institute for Education, Hamburg

“We women have presented an alternative proposal to society and to humanity. It is about the construction of a world where tolerance is a life style; Where daily social and political divergences and its resolutions would be seen as part of humanity; Where equality would be possible in all its dimensions; Where knowledge and access to education and other social possessions would not be the privilege of a few; A world where violence in all its forms would be past history, where fear will not overwhelm us and where we shall be able to enjoy the goodness of existence.”
~ Rafaela vos Obeso

What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.
-- Elie Wiesel

* We bequeath to you, the next generation, our knowledge but also our problems. While we still live, let us join hands, hearts and minds to work together for their solution so that your world will be better than ours and the world of your children even better.
-- Rosalyn Yalow

If we are to have faith that mankind will survive and thrive on the face of the earth, we must believe that each succeeding generation will be wiser than its progenitors. We transmit to you, the next generation, the total sum of our knowledge. Yours is the responsibility to use it, add to it, and transmit it to your children.
-- Rosalyn Yalow

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