"In all disciplines in which there is systematic knowledge of things with principles, causes, or elements, it arises from a grasp of those: we think we have knowledge of a thing when we have found its primary causes and principles, and followed it back to its elements." (Aristotle, "Physics", cca. 350 BC)
"There are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience." (Roger Bacon, "Opus Majus", 1267)
"Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true." (John Locke, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", 1689)
"He that would make a real progress in knowledge must dedicate his age as well as first fruits - the latter growth as well as the first-fruits - at the altar of truth." (Bishop George Berkeley, "Siris", 1744)
"Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook D, 1773-1775)
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." (Samuel Johnson, 1775)
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again; the never satisfied man is so strange if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully, but in order to begin another. I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretched out his arms for others." (Carl F Gauss, [Letter to Farkas Bolyai] 1808)
"The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing." (Charles C Colton, "Lacon", 1820)
"Truth in itself is rarely sufficient to make men act. Hence the step is always long from cognition to volition, from knowledge to ability. The most powerful springs of action in men lie in his emotions." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)
"In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data." (James C Maxwell, [Letter to Lewis Campbell] 1851)
"The true aim of the teacher must be to impart an appreciation of method and not a knowledge of facts." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)
"Man's determination not to be deceived is precisely the origin of the problem of knowledge. The question is always and only this: to learn to know and to grasp reality in the midst of a thousand causes of error which tend to vitiate our observation." (Federigo Enriques, "Problems of Science", 1906)
"If the fresh facts which come to our knowledge all fit themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually become a solution." (Arthur C Doyle, "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge", 1908)
"Knowledge is the distilled essence of our intuitions, corroborated by experience." (Elbert Hubbard, "A Thousand & One Epigrams, 1911)
"It is experience which has given us our first real knowledge of Nature and her laws. It is experience, in the shape of observation and experiment, which has given us the raw material out of which hypothesis and inference have slowly elaborated that richer conception of the material world which constitutes perhaps the chief, and certainly the most characteristic, glory of the modern mind." (Arthur J Balfour, "The Foundations of Belief", 1912)
"The urge to knowledge is so deeply rooted in man that it can scarcely be omitted from a list of life's important needs." (Hans Reichenbach, "Atom and Cosmos: The World of Modern Physics", 1933)
"We have discovered that it is actually an aid in the search for knowledge to understand the nature of the knowledge we seek." (Arthur S Eddington, "The Philosophy of Physical Science", 1938)
"When a science approaches the frontiers of its knowledge, it seeks refuge in allegory or in analogy." (Erwin Chargaff, "Essays on Nucleic Acids", 1963)
"We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance." (John A Wheeler, Scientific American Vol. 267, 1992)
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