Transient Knowledge Quotes

We lament the speed of our society and the lack of depth and the nature of disposable information.

In chess, knowledge is a very transient thing. It changes so fast that even a single mouse-slip sometimes changes the evaluation.

Much of the wisdom of one age, is the folly of the next.

Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.

That is one thing I've learned, that it is possible to really understand things at certain points, and not be able to retain them, to be in utter confusion just a short while later. I used to think that once you really knew a thing, its truth would shine on forever. Now it's pretty obvious to me that more often than not the batteries fade, and sometimes what you knew even goes out with a bang when you try to call on it, just like a lightbulb cracking off when you throw the switch.

Scientific thought - indeed, any mode of thought, whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else - is just like the fashions that we wear - only much longer lived. It's a little like a boy band.

The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.

I take it that a monograph of this sort belongs to the ephemera literature of science. The studied care which is warranted in the treatment of the more slowly moving branches of science would be out of place here. Rather with the pen of a journalist we must attempt to record a momentary phase of current thought, which may at any instant change with kaleidoscopic abruptness.

Certainly it's great to be able to talk to your friends about something. They might mention a film, and you can find all about it, and you don't have to wait months until you can find a book that might cover the subject and keep it in your head. You can have that kind of immediacy. But there's also something about it, where all the knowledge seems kind of fleeting. All the stuff I learn about in that way, I can be interested in for a day and then it's gone.