Knowledge

Works to read

• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke, 1689 · Great Books
• Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi, 1958
• Posterior Analytics and Physics by Aristotle, 4th century BCE · Great Books
• A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge by George Berkeley, 1710 · Great Books
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume, 1748 · Great Books
• Charmides, Lysis and Laches by Plato, c. 390s BC · Great Books
• Novum Organum by Francis Bacon, 1620 · Great Books
• The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, 1912 · Great Books
• Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg, 1958 · Great Books
• The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, c. 1418–1427
• Against Heresies by Irenaeus of Lyons, c. 180
• The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1872

Passages

• In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge

  — François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

• just as if knowledge were a slave, and might be dragged about anyhow

  — Plato, Protagoras

• By demonstration I mean a syllogism productive of scientific knowledge

  — Aristotle, Posterior Analytics and Physics

• I pray him to give me knowledge, which of all medicines is the most perfect and best

  — Plato, Critias

• And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven

  — William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2

• Then, my dear boy, I said, the knowledge which we want is one that uses as well as makes

  — Plato, Euthydemus

Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: knowledge, know, understanding. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.