Michael Polanyi Quotes

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.

Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.

A lot of knowledge in any kind of an organization is what we call task knowledge. These are things that people who have been there a long time understand are important, but they may not know how to talk about them. It's often called the culture of the organization.

Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

A fact must be assimilated with, or discriminated fromm, some other fact or facts, in order to be raised to the dignity of a truth, and made to convey the least knowledge to the mind.

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.

A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?

The implications of these considerations justify the statement that all empirically verifiable knowledge even the commonsense knowledge of everyday life - involves implicitly, if not explicitly, systematic theory in this sense.

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.

The most obvious purpose of college education is to help students acquire information and knowledge by acquainting them with facts, theories, generalizations, principles, and the like. This purpose scarcely requires justification.

Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.

That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell.

What we do not understand we do not possess.

He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.

Saying the words that come from knowledge is no sign of having it.

He that teaches us anything which we knew not before is undoubtedly to be reverenced as a master.

For knowing is spoken of in three ways: it may be either universal knowledge or knowledge proper to the matter in hand or actualising such knowledge; consequently three kinds of error also are possible.