Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
Everybody's got a different circle of competence. The important thing is not how big the circle is. The important thing is staying inside the circle.
When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.
You don’t have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.
It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.
No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.
Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.
I am not a positivist. Positivism states that what cannot be observed does not exist. This conception is scientifically indefensible, for it is impossible to make valid affirmations of what people 'can' or 'cannot' observe. One would have to say 'only what we observe exists,' which is obviously false.
There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.
Scientists don't read theology; they don't read philosophy. It doesn't make any difference to what they're doing - for better or worse, it may not be a value judgment, but it's true.
All our knowledge - past, present, and future - is nothing compared to what we will never know.
That knowledge which stops at what it does not know, is the highest knowledge.
I have a much easier time imagining how we would understand the big bang, even though we can't do it yet, than I can imagine understanding consciousness.
The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
Every discovery opens a new field for investigation of facts, shows us the imperfection of our theories. It has justly been said, that the greater the circle of light, the greater the boundary of darkness by which it is surrounded.
The circle of our understanding is a very restricted area.
Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?
Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.
The scientist rigorously defends his right to be ignorant of almost everything except his specialty.
Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.
It may be beyond the limits of human intelligence to understand how human intelligence works.
There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
One might say science is the sum total of our knowledge of the universe, the great library of the known, but the practice of science happens at the border between the known and the unknown. Standing on the shoulders of giants, we peer into the darkness with eyes opened not in fear but in wonder.
A teacher can only lead you to the threshold of your own mind.
