John Petit-Senn Quotes

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are

Knowledge is boundless,--human capacity, limited.

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

I don't believe anybody can really grasp everything that's even in one textbook.

Science is like a flashlight in the hands of people living in a huge balloon. They can illuminate anything in the balloon, but cannot shine it outside the balloon to see where it is floating - or if it is floating at all.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself.

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

At a certain point the audience shouldn't worry about catching every word and understanding every twist and turn, because at a certain point that's pretty much impossible.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

The circle of our understanding is a very restricted area.

I don't think it's meant for man to know everything at once.

Even great spirits have only their five-fingers' breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins.

Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows.

Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.

The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on a page of a newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page.

No act of man can claim to be more than an attempt, not even science.

The real essence, the internal qualities, and constitution of even the meanest object, is hid from our view; something there is inevery drop of water, every grain of sand, which it is beyond the power of human understanding to fathom or comprehend. But it is evidentthat we are influenced by false principles to that degree as to mistrust our senses, and think we know nothing of those things which we perfectly comprehend.

All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a perfect understanding of the action of natural and moral forces.

You cannot judge any man beyond your knowledge of him, and how small is your knowledge.

'Tis certain that our senses are extremely disproportioned for comprehending the whole compass and latitude of things.

Every man has seen the wall that limits his mind.

Everybody knows something, and nobody knows everything.

It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.

Let's imagine again an observer looking at us without any preconceptions. I think he would be struck by the fact that although human beings have the capacity to develop scientific knowledge, it must be a very limited capacity because it is only done in very narrow and specific domains.