Horace Mann Quotes

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are

Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of great importance.

Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

All that we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown.

In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.

Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.

Our ignorance will always remain greater than our knowledge.

If we define a miracle as an effect of which the cause is unknown to us, then we make our ignorance the source of miracles! And the universe itself would be a standing miracle. A miracle might be perhaps defined more exactly as an effect which is not the consequence or effect of any known laws of nature.

Of power does Man possess no particle: Of knowledge-just so much as show that still It ends in ignorance on every side.

We must know, if only in order to learn not to know. The supreme lesson of human consciousness is to learn how not to know. That is, how not to interfere.

Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

... informed ignorance provides the natural state of mind for research scientists at the ever-shifting frontiers of knowledge. People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos.

BEFORE I DISCOVERED THE miracles of science, magic ruled the world.

Science is the topography of ignorance.

There are, in effect, two things, to know and to believe one knows; to know is science; to believe one knows is ignorance.

Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

Religion is still parasitic in the interstices of our knowledge which have not yet been filled. Like bed-bugs in the cracks of walls and furniture, miracles lurk in the lacunae of science. The scientist plasters up these cracks in our knowledge; the more militant Rationalist swats the bugs in the open. Both have their proper sphere and they should realize that they are allies.

The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.

Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.

To know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.