Quotes about Knowledge

The questions answered by inspectional reading are: first, what kind of book is it? second, what is it about as a whole? and third, what is the structural order of the work whereby the author develops his conception or understanding of that general subject matter?

The first is: if you can, read more than one history of an event or period that interests you. The second is: read a history not only to learn what really happened at a particular time and place in the past, but also to learn the way men act in all times and places, especially now.

A good historian must combine the talents of the storyteller and the scientist. He must know what is likely to have happened as well as what some witnesses or writers said actually did happen.

Francis Bacon once remarked that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.

You will also find authors who do not know the difference between theory and practice, just as there are novelists who do not know the difference between fiction and sociology.

Read it quickly and with total immersion.

Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.

You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, I understand, before you can say any one of the following things: I agree, or I disagree, or I suspend Judgment.

If communications were not complex, structural outlining would be unnecessary. If language were a perfect medium instead of a relatively opaque one, there would be no need for interpretation. If error and ignorance did not circumscribe truth and knowledge, we should not have to be critical.

always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.

We are a sum total of what we have learned from all who have taught us, both great and small.

God's Will is what we would choose if we knew what God knows.