Prior Knowledge Quotes

As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

I know Pentatonix. I knew them before they were even a group.

That's how easy baseball was for me. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I had the knowledge before I became a professional baseball player to do all these things and know what each guy would hit.

We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They've heard it on the radio. They've seen it on the Internet. They've seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.

Empty heads, cognitive science has taught us, learn nothing. The powerful cultural and personal flexibility of our species is owed at least in part to our starting off so well-informed; we are good learners because we know what to pay attention to and what questions are the right ones to ask.

I'm not interested in on-the-job learning or on-the-job training.

We see only what we know.

I really had no religious upbringing, which is unusual. But I think it saved me, because when I found the theory that I wanted to follow, I did not have anything to unlearn.

It is one of the misfortunes in life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them.

I don't believe in intuition. When you get sudden flashes of perception, it is just the brain working faster than usual. But you've been getting ready to know it for a long time, and when it comes, you feel you've known it always.

How is it that so often . . . I get the feeling I've worked hard to learn something I already know, or knew, once.

You have to get a little untrapped from too much prior knowledge.

Concepts antedate facts.

The better your base is, and the more you know from experience, the better off you'll be when you try and make the big move.

We live in reference to past experience and not to future events, however inevitable.

What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead.

Insight must precede application.

I've done a barre class before. I swear.

To accept reason is impossible if you don't already possess it.

I knew how to read box scores and who the baseball heroes were before I had ever seen or even heard much of a game.

I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read them--which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it.

When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience.

All learning is derived from things previously known.

We cannot go after thousands of men until we learn how to win one.

Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows.