Friedrich Hayek Quotes

This means that no single logic is strong enough to support the total construction of human knowledge.

The limits of thought are not so much set from outside, by the fullness or poverty of experiences that meet the mind, as from within, by the power of conception, the wealth of formulative notions with which the mind meets experiences.

One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.

Further, there are things of which the mind understands one part, but remains ignorant of the other; and when man is able to comprehend certain things, it does not follow that he must be able to comprehend everything.

I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge.

But inner experience is only one source of human knowledge.

I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller - some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.

All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell.

Knowledge is boundless,--human capacity, limited.

Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch-or build a cyclotron-without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think

Science is a tribute to what we can know, although we are fallible.

I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.

We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way.

The very might of the human intellect reveals its limits.

With our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations.

Even great spirits have only their five-fingers' breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins.

Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.

For, strictly considered, 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?

... the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all.

A knowledge of mankind and of things that surround us gives us that second education which proves far move valuable than our first because it alone turns out a truly accomplished man.

The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.

One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows.... Knowledge is the thing you know and how can you know more than you do know.

Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, the mere materials with which wisdom builds, till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

The mind Is so hospitable, taking in everything Like boarders, and you don't see until It's all over how little there was to learn Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated.