172 Quotes About Epistemology

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

Perhaps one is to first learn the signifiers denoting esteem and conveying authority and from there build the foundation of knowledge based upon this arbitrary system of reputational faith. This logic seems agreeable to me—one must start somewhere, after all!—but, at the same time, I would first have to convince myself that there is something, anything at all, worth knowing. Right now, even this seems a rather challenging proposition.

A great truth wants to be criticized not idolized

Knowledge is not discovery, but recognition.

ideas generate action when they are believed regardless of whether they are true or not in our opinion

It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

A compulsion, a life with a goal, how could you tell the difference?

Knowledge we find in articles, books, and courses, but wisdom we find only in our own hearts.

The...act of surrender—or devotion, as the case may be—was, to him, a kind of lifeline for those who sought a quick answer and didn’t want to stick around long enough to see their doubt through to its ultimate conclusion. A conclusion, which, of itself, was a bittersweet paradox—for how could doubt simply cease to exist by any stretch of the imagination? Doubt was, nonetheless—from his own perspective—the only inclusive insight into the nature of a Truth exclusive of conditions.