Jean Piaget Quotes

To express the same idea in still another way, I think that human knowledge is essentially active.

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

Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

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

Knowledge is justified belief.

No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.

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.

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.

Anything that gives us new knowledge gives us an opportunity to be more rational.

Philosophy wasn't about facts, it was about ideas. My first essay title was something like: 'How can you know what other people are thinking?' I thought, 'Wow, what an amazing thing.' I really thought deeply for the first time.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?

Do not imagine that what we have said of the insufficiency of our understanding and of its limited extent is an assertion founded only on the Bible: for philosophers likewise assert the same, and perfectly understand it,- without having regard to any religion or opinion.

Human knowledge is dark and uncertain; philosophy is dark, astrology is dark, and geometry is dark.

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.

But inner experience is only one source of human knowledge.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

A wise system of education will at last teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

Knowledge consists in understanding the evidence that establishes the fact, not in the belief that it is a fact.

In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.