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The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
Albert Einstein Ideas and Opinions · 1954

Epistemology Quotations

“The search for truth is more precious than its possession.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

Albert Einstein · Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, 1920 · Primary source

“Every thing impossible, until we see a success.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Experience, 1844 · Primary source

“Truth was the only daughter of Time.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. It be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, them it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.”

Helen Keller · Optimism, 1903 · Primary source

“If Jack’s in love, he’s no judge of Jill’s beauty.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 · Primary source

“Wisdom is the daughter of experience.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“The true method of knowledge is experiment.”

William Blake · All Religions are One, 1788 · Primary source

“The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”

Ian Fleming · Goldfinger, 1959 · Primary source

“I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Circles, 1841 · Primary source

“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Nature, 1836 · Primary source

“Being able to recognize that you are wrong is a godsend.”

Charlie Munger · Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting, 2020 · Primary source

“In war nothing is ever as bad, or as good, as it is reported to Higher Headquarters.”

George S. Patton · War As I Knew It, 1947 · Primary source

“So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“Most problems in real life are poorly understood, in that the real problem is often something different from what it is orginally thought to be.”

Tony Hoare · Computer Science, 1971 · Primary source

“When the wine enters, out goes the truth.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Intellect, 1841 · Primary source

“If you see smoke, there must be fire.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“The golden age never was the present age.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Experience, 1844 · Primary source

“Our spontaneous action is always the best.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Intellect, 1841 · Primary source

“When it is useful to them, men can believe a theory of which they know nothing more than its name.”

Vilfredo Pareto · Manual of Political Economy, 1906 · Primary source

“I would study, I would know, I would admire forever.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Harvard Divinity School Address, 1838 · Primary source

“In the development of our understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction. Abstraction arises from a recognition of similarities between certain objects, situations, or processes in the real world, and the decision to concentrate on these similarities, and to ignore for the time being the differences.”

Tony Hoare · Structured Programming, 1972 · Primary source

“There’s actually very little distinction between an artist and a scientist or engineer of the highest calibre.”

Steve Jobs · Smithsonian Oral and Video Histories: Steve Jobs, 1995 · Primary source

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 · Primary source

“The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.”

Helen Keller · Optimism, 1903 · Primary source

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“A lie stands on one leg, truth on two.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.”

Winston Churchill · The Story of the Malakand Field Force, 1898 · Primary source

“Half the truth is often a great lie.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The fact that I am neither a Greek nor a Turk perhaps creates little presumption of my being fair-minded, for Western partisans of non-Western peoples are often more fanatical than their favourites.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, 1922 · Primary source

“You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 · Primary source

“Beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers to study the world.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Beauty, 1841 · Primary source

“There is no knowledge that is not power.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Old Age, 1870 · Primary source

“Fear always springs from ignorance.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar, 1837 · Primary source

“If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question [of whether you are past the boundary] is to answer it.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“One look is worth one hundred reports.”

George S. Patton · War As I Knew It, 1947 · Primary source

Explore the subcategory

Epistemology

15 authors · 28 works · 85 themes · 147 tags
Authors
Albert Einstein Theoretical physicistBenjamin Franklin American statesmanWinston Churchill British prime minister
Works
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory Albert Einstein · 1920Ideas and Opinions Albert Einstein · 1954Poor Richard’s Almanack Benjamin Franklin · 1732-1758
Themes
Knowledge through experienceThe value of inquiry itselfCertainty as a stopping point
Tags
PerceptionTruthKnowledgeEvidence
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