"The limit of man's knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination." (Charles Darwin, "Journal of Researches Into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle: Under the Command of Captain FitzRoy, R. N., from 1832-6", 1836
"My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before - a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun." (Henry D Thoreau, "Walking", 1851)
"If the fresh facts which come to our knowledge all fit themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually become a solution." (Arthur C Doyle, "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge", 1908)
"Knowledge is the distilled essence of our intuitions, corroborated by experience." (Elbert Hubbard, "A Thousand & One Epigrams, 1911)
"As the traveller who has been once from home is wiser than he who has never left his own door step, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinise more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own." (Margaret Mead, "Coming of Age in Samoa", 1928)
"A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Flight to Arras", 1942)
"Can any of us fix anything? No. None of us can do that. We're specialized. Each one of us has his own line, his own work. I understand my work, you understand yours. The tendency in evolution is toward greater and greater specialization. Man's society is an ecology that forces adaptation to it. Continued complexity makes it impossible for us to know anything outside our own personal field - I can't follow the work of the man sitting at the next desk over from me. Too much knowledge has piled up in each field. And there are too many fields." (Philip K. Dick, The Variable Man", 1952)
"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to Man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call ... The Twilight Zone." (Rod Serling, "The Twilight Zone" [TV series] 1959)
"The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture - it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead." (Frank Herbert, "Dune", 1965)
"These dwarfs amass knowledge as others do treasure; for this reason they are called Hoarders of the Absolute. Their wisdom lies in the fact that they collect knowledge but never use it." (Stanislaw Lem, "How Erg the Self-Inducing Slew a Paleface", 1965)
"But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. […] It is dangerous, that power. [...] It must follow knowledge, and serve need." (Ursula K Le Guin, "A Wizard of Earthsea", 1968)
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." (Frank Herbert, "Children of Dune", 1976)
"Their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do." (Douglas Adams, "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish", 1985)
"What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?" (Iain Banks, "Use of Weapons", 1990)
"All knowledge is local, all truth is partial. [...] No truth can make another truth untrue. All knowledge is part of the whole knowledge. A true line, a true color. Once you have seen the larger pattern, you cannot get back to seeing the part as the whole." (Ursula K Le Guin, "A Man of the People", 1995)
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