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And I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in the west by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into—into what? Into Zen Buddhism; into falsely profound questions about, Are we not really just animals at bottom; into extra-sensory perception and mystery. They do not lie along the line of what we are able to know if we devote ourselves to it: an understanding of man himself. We are nature’s unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex. Knowledge is our destiny. Self-knowledge, at last bringing together the experience of the arts and the explanations of science, waits ahead of us.
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Episode 13: "The Long Childhood"

 

Jacob Bronowski

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Knowledge is necessary to act in the sense of my going home from here to the place I live; I must have knowledge for this; I must have knowledge to speak English; I must have knowledge to write a letter and so on. Knowledge as function, mechanical function, is necessary. Now if I use that knowledge in my relationship with you, another human being, I am bringing about a barrier, a division between you and me, namely the observer. That is, knowledge, in relationship, in human relationship, is destructive. That is knowledge which is the tradition, the memory, the image, which the mind has built about you, that knowledge is separative and therefore creates conflict in our relationship.

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

I must say that I have been deeply gratified by reading a book [Hayek's "The Sensory Order"] of which I had not been aware when I wrote my little essay on group selection theory … I was deeply impressed … I recommend this book to your attention [i.e. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences], as an exercise in profound thinking by a man who simply considers knowledge for its own sake. What impressed me most is his understanding that the key to the problem of perception is to comprehend the nature of classification. Taxonomists have struggled with this problem many times, but I think von Hayek considered this problem in a broader sense.

 

Friedrich Hayek

 

It is not unscientific to make a guess, although many people who are not in science think it is. Some years ago I had a conversation with a layman about flying saucers — because I am scientific I know all about flying saucers! I said “I don’t think there are flying saucers”. So my antagonist said, “Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it’s impossible?” “No”, I said, “I can’t prove it’s impossible. It’s just very unlikely”. At that he said, “You are very unscientific. If you can’t prove it impossible then how can you say that it’s unlikely?” But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible. To define what I mean, I might have said to him, "Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence." It is just more likely. That is all.

 

Richard Feynman

 

They say that, 'Why are you telling us that this Knowledge has to be taken from me?' But I don't say that this Knowledge has to be taken from me. I want that you should take this Knowledge, that's only I want to tell you. I don't say take from, from me. Take it. If you want to take it from me, go ahead. I'll give you. You can get it from someone else, go to someone he will give you. But the problem is you have to take it. That is the main thing. That doesn't mean you take from me. Go around the world, search for the spiritual master. If you cannot get this Knowledge, and you cannot receive this true Knowledge, then please come to me and I will give you this Knowledge.

 

Maharaji (Prem Rawat)