Carolus Linnaeus Quotes

Science is the systematic classification of experience.

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

One thing scientists do is to find order among a large number of facts, and one way to do that across fields as diverse as biology, geology, physics and astronomy is through classification.

I love titles and organizing chains of ideas. I like that very much.

Name the different kinds of people,’ said Miss Lupescu. ‘Now.’ Bod thought for a moment. ‘The living,’ he said. ‘Er. The dead.’ He stopped. Then, ‘... Cats?’ he offered, uncertainly.

People seem to have a great love for names. For to know a great many names seems to look like knowing a good many things.

Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.

What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew it's biological name? Did it exist?

The idea of dates, boxes, categories are very scary for me.

A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions.

If you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom.

Nomenclature, the other foundation of botany, should provide the names as soon as the classification is made... If the names are unknown knowledge of the things also perishes... For a single genus, a single name.

Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.

The names of the plants ought to be stable [certa], consequently they should be given to stable genera.

The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

It's like the more you know the more you know you don't know.

Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully. Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh; "my name means the shape I am - and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.

All ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again.

A man can learn a lot if he listens, and if I didn't learn anything else I was learning how much I didn't know.

There is nothing new to gain. On the other hand a man must lose his ignorance. That is all.

Be versed in ancient lore, and familiarize yourself with the modern; then may you become teachers.

We need science, more and better science, not for its technology, not for leisure, not even for health or longevity, but for the hope of wisdom which our kind of culture must acquire for its survival.

There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.