Thomas Carlyle Quotes

What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?

Ultimately all knowing, from the highest to the lowest, is the result of experience; it arises on the way of experiences.

There are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

Belief sometimes precedes understanding; faith sometimes precedes scientific evidence.

Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

The deductive method is the mode of using knowledge, and the inductive method the mode of acquiring it.

But inner experience is only one source of human knowledge.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

I hear, I know. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.

A page of history is worth a volume of logic.

Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.

There are two modes of knowledge: through argument and through experience. Argument brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but it does not cause certainty nor remove doubts that the mind may rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience.

Not having heard something is not as good as having heard it; having heard it is not as good as having seen it; having seen it is not as good as knowing it; knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice.

The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts.

Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.

There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience.

In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts.

Knowledge must come through action.

Learning is not doing; it is reflecting on doing.

All inferences from experience... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.

An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory!

Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.

Knowledge must come through action. You can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.

The things of which we want the proof are those we know the best.