Pre-Existing Knowledge Quotes

It's always a help when you have worked with someone as you've got to know them a bit already.

In the first place, the preparation of the Nobel lecture which I am to give has shown me, even more clearly than I knew before, how many others share with me, often, indeed, have anticipated me, in the discoveries for which you have awarded me the prize.

I am well aware of the fact that the human race has known about the existence of a universal energy related to life for many ages. However, the basic task of natural science consisted of making this energy usable. This is the sole difference between my work and all preceding knowledge.

Sometimes ideas feel like they were already there, and that you're just discovering them.

A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

We only understand that which already is within us.

We were never thrown into the situation in the middle of our lives, but grew up doing it. This is all we know, and some people who were thrown into it don't really know what to do or how to react and this is just kind of natural for us.

And the things you know before you hear them; these are you and the reason you are in the world.

It is a strong proof of men knowing most things before birth, that when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that they are not then taking them in for the first time, but are remembering and recalling them.