This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
The more one penetrates the realm of knowledge the more puzzling everything becomes.
A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.
Books | Children | Excitement | Family | Knowledge | Love | Man | Means | Mind | Reading | Right | Wrong | Learn |
I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.
Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind... The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.
Knowledge | Nothing | Object | Sensibility | Thought | Understanding | Think |
All our knowledge falls within the bounds of possible experience.
Experience | Knowledge |
Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of non-knowledge.
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."
All our knowledge begins with sense, proceeds thence to understanding, and ends with reason, beyond which nothing higher can be discovered in the human mind for elaborating the matter of intuition and subjecting it to the highest unity of thought.
Ends | Intuition | Knowledge | Mind | Nothing | Reason | Sense | Thought | Understanding | Unity |
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.
Better | Choice | Control | Destroy | Enough | Eternal | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Life | Life | Price | Universe | Wise | Wonder | Learn |
Human knowledge is personal and responsible, an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
Adventure | Knowledge | Uncertainty |
Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience and of an extraordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.
Calmness | Control | Effort | Experience | Knowledge | Mind | Self | Self-control | Thought | Wisdom |
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself.
Not only are moral laws with their principles essentially distinguished from every other kind of practical knowledge in which there is anything empirical, but all moral philosophy rests wholly on its pure part. When applied to man, it does not borrow the least thing from the knowledge of man himself (anthropology), but gives laws a priori to him as a rational being. No doubt these laws require a judgment sharpened by experience, in order on the one hand to distinguish in what cases they are applicable, and on the other to procure for them access to the will of the man and effectual influence on conduct; since man is acted on by so many inclinations that, though capable of the idea of a practical pure reason, he is not so easily able to make it effective in concreto in his life.
Conduct | Distinguish | Doubt | Experience | Influence | Judgment | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Order | Philosophy | Principles | Reason | Will |