Complete quotations of authors whose names start with K

• Kahn, Gus

  There's nothing surer,
  The RICH get rich and the poor get poorer,
  In the meantime, in between time,
  Ain't we got fun.
  

• Kaiser, Henry

  PROBLEMS are opportunities in work clothes.

• Kalinin, Mikhail Ivanovich

  RELIGION is said to be human prejudice. This is not quite correct. It is more than a prejudice. In a certain sense, it is the remnant human weakness in face of the forces of nature.

• Kamen. Martin

  NITROGEN tantalizes mankind with the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty. All living things on this planet - animal and vegetable- must have nitrogen in their food. The earth's atmosphere contains far more than enough nitrogen to satisfy requirements; there are some 20 million tons of it in the air over each square mile of the earth's surface. Yet the free nitrogen nitrogen in the air is so difficult to incorporate into foodstuffs that man must engage in back-breaking toil to conserve the comparatively small amount that nature-captures and fixes in be soil.

  To be sure, it is fortunate that nitrogen is chemically inert. If it were less reluctant to combine with other elements (and its thermodynamic relations indicate that it has the potentiality of being much more active than it ordinarily is), it might readily combine with water to form NITRIC ACID. As some authorities on thermodynamics have pointed out, "it is to be hoped that nature will not discover a catalyst for this reaction", for if it did, the oceans would turn into dilute nitric acid - a catastrophe certainly as horrible as any visualized in speculating about atomic warfare.

• Kant, Immanuel

  1. Thus all HUMAN KNOWLEDGE begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.
  2. Thoughts without content are empty, INTUITIONS without CONCEPTS are blind.
  3. Two things fill my mind with ever increasing awe: the starry heavens, and the MORAL LAW within.
  4. NATURE is BEAUTIFUL because it looks like ART; and art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as art while yet it looks like nature.
  5. Everything in nature, whether in the animate or inanimate world, takes place according to RULES, although we do not always know these rules. Water falls according to the LAWS of GRAVITY, and in animals locomotion also takes place according to rules. The fish in the water, the bird in the air, move according to rules. All nature, indeed, is nothing but a combination of PHENOMENA which follow rules and nowhere is there any irregularity.
  6. I have come with my writing a century TOO SOON; after a hundred YEARS people will begin to understand me rightly, and will then STUDY my books anew and appreciate them.

• Karman, von Theodore

  The scientist describes what is;
  the ENGINEER creates what never was.
  

• Kasner, Edward

  PUZ2LES are made of the things that the MATHEMATICIAN, no less than the child, plays with, and dreams and wonders about, for they are made of the things and circumstances of the world he lives in.

• Kautsky, Karl Johann

  DEMOCRACY is the shortest, surest and least costly road to SOCIALISM, just as it is the best investment for the development of the political and social prerequisites for socialism. Democracy and socialism are inextricably entwined.

• Kazantzakis, Nikos

  1. The highest point a man can attain is not knowledge, or virtue, or goodness; or victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing:: SACRED AWE.
  2. We have seen the highest circle of spiralling powers. We have named this circle GOD. We might have given it any other name we wished: ABYS, MYSTERY, ABSOLUTE DARKNESS, ABSOLUTE LIGHT MATTER, SPIRIT, ULTIMATE HOPE, ULTIMATE DESPAIR, SILENCE.
  3. The doors of HEAVEN and HELL are adjacent and identical: both green, both BEAUTIFUL.
  4. A NAME is a prison, God is free.
  5. Struggling slowly, I move among the PHENOMENA WHICH I CREATE, I distinguish between them for my convenience, I unite them with laws and yoke them to my heavy practical needs.

     I IMPOSE ORDER on DISORDER and give a face - my face - to chaos.

     I do not know whether behind appearances there lives and moves a SECRET ESSENCE SUPERIOR TO ME. Nor do I ask; I do not care. I create phenomena in swarms, and paint with a full palette a gigantic and gaudy curtain before the abyss. Do not say, "draw the curtain that I may see the painting. The curtain is the painting. 6."I wrote, I crossed out. I could not find suitable words. Sometimes they were dull and soulless, sometimes indecently gaudy, at other times abstract and full of air, lacking a warm body. I knew what I planned to say when I set out, but the shiftless, unbridled words dragged me elsewhere . . . In vain I toiled to find a simple idiom. . .

     Realizing that the time had not arrived, that the SECRET METAMORPHOSIS INSIDE THE SEED still had not been complete, I STOPPED.

• Keats, John

  1.  . . . .
     Attic shape! fair attitude!  with brede
            Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
     With forest branches and the trodden weed;
           Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
     As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!
           When old age shall this generation waste,
             Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe               .
           Than ours, a friend to man, to who thou sayst,
     'BEAUTY is TRUTH, truth beauty, - that is all
            Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know".'
     

  2. The mighty abstract Idea I have of BEAUTY in ALL THINGS stifles the more divided and minute happiness - an amiable wife and sweet children I contemplate as a part of that BEAUTY - but I must have a thousand of those beautiful particles to fill up my heart. I feel more and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I DO NOT LIVE IN THIS WORLD ALONE BUT IN A THOUSAND WORLDS. No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me and serve my spirit the office which is equivalent to a King's bodyguard - then 'tragedy with scepter'd pall, comes seeping by'. According to my state of mind I am with Achilles shouting in the Trenches, or with Theocritus in the Vales in Sicily. Or I throw my whole being into Triclus, and repeating those lines, 'I wander, like a lost Soul upon the stygian Banks staying for waftage', I melt into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be ALONE.
  3. The GENIUS of POETRY must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law & precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself - THAT WHICH IS CREATIVE MUST CREATE ITSELF- In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice. - I WAS NEVER AFRAID OF FAILURE; for I would sooner FAIL than not be AMONG the GREATEST.
  4. I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the INSPIRATION - What the IMAGINATION seizes as beauty must be TRUTH - whether it existed before or not - for I have the same IDEA of all our Passions as of love; they are all in their sublime, creative of essential beauty - The IMAGINATION may be compared to Adam's dream - he awoke and found it TRUTH. I am the more zealous in this affair, because I have never yet been able to perceive how any thing can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning -and yet it must be. Can it be that even the greatest Philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections - However it may be, 0 FOR A LIFE OF SENSATIONS RATHER THAN OF Thoughts!
  5. We hate POETRY that has a palpable design upon us . . . POETRY should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze it with itself but with its subject. 10."If SIMPLICITY does not BEAUTY make Can CREATIVITY from INTUITION take?" 11."Now it appears to me that almost any Man may like the SPIDER spin from his own INWARDS his own AIRY CITADEL - the points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins hard work are few and she fills the Air with a beautiful circuiting: man should be content with as few points to tip with the FINE WEB OF HIS SOUL and WEAVE A TAPESTRY EMPYREAN - full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wandering, of distinctness for his Luxury.
  6. The excellence of every Art is its INTENSITY, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close relationship with BEAUTY & Truth - Examine King Lear & you will find this exemplified throughout.
  7. In POETRY I have a few Axioms and you will see how far I am from their Centre. 1. I think Poetry should SURPRISE by a fine excess and not by Singularity - it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a REMEMBRANCE - 2. Its touches of BEAUTY should never be half way thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him - shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the Luxury of twilight - BUT IT IS EASIER TO THINK WHAT POETRY SHOULD BE THAN TO WRITE IT - and this leads me to another axiom. That of poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves of a tree it had better not come at all. However OT may be with me I cannot help looking into new countries with ' O for a Muse of fire to ascend! ' - If Endymion serves me as a Pioneer perhaps I ought to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand SHAKESPEARE to his depths, and I have I am sure many friends who, if I fail, will attribute my change in my Life and Temper to Humbleness rather than to Pride - to a cowering under the Wings of great Poets rather than to a Bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious to get Endymion printed that I may forget it and proceed.
  8. As to the POETICAL CHARACTER itself, (I mean that sort of which, if I am anything, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) IT IS NOT ITSELF - IT HAS NO SELF - IT IS EVERYTHING AND NOTHING - IT HAS NO CHARACTER - IT ENJOYS LIGHT AND SHADE; IT LIVES IN GUSTO, BE IT FOUL OR FAIR, HIGH OR LOW, RICH OR POOR, MEAN OR ELEVATED - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity - he is continually informing and filling some other Body -. The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute - the poet has none . . . When I am in a room with people if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of every one in the room begins to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated - not only among Men; 'd would be the same in a Nursery of children . . .

     In the second place I will speak of my views, and of the life I purpose to myself - I am ambitious of doing the world some good: if I should be spared that may be the work of maturer years - in the interval I will assay to reach to as high a summit in Poetry as the nerve bestowed upon me will suffer. the faint conceptions I have of Poems to come bring the blood frequently into my forehead.

  9. The STARS look very cold about the sky,
       And I have many miles on foot to fare.
     

  10. FANATICS have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect.
  11. Let me have MUSIC dying, and I seek no more delight.

  12. If SIMPLICITY does not BEAUTY make
      Can CREATIVITY from INTUITION take?
      

• Keith, Sir Arthur

  Take three hundred men out of HISTORY and we should still be living in the STONE AGE.

• Keller, Helen

  We CAN do
  anything we want to
  if we stick to it
  long enough.
  

• Kelvin, Lord William Thomson

  1. ACCURATE and MINUTE MEASUREMENTS seem to the non-scientific imagination a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurements and patient long-continued labors in the minute sifting of numerical results.
  2. I often say that when you can MEASURE what you are speaking about, and express it in NUMBERS, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of SCIENCE, whatever the matter may be.

• Kennedy, John Fitzgerald

  1. We.must EDUCATE people today for a future in which the choice to be faced cannot be anticipated by even the WISEST now among us.
  2. Our progress as a NATION can be no swifter than our progress in EDUCATION.

  3. I look forward to a GREAT FUTURE for AMERICA,
     a future in which our country will match
          its military strength with our MORAL STRENGTH,
            its wealth with our WISDOM,
              its power with our PURPOSE.
     I look forward to an America which will not be afraid
       	of GRACE and BEAUTY,
     which will protect the beauty of our natural environment,
     which will preserve the great old
       American houses and squares and parks
     of our American past,
     and which will build handsome and balanced cities
     for our FUTURE . . . .
     . . . . . . . . . . 
     And I look forward to an America which commands
     RESPECT throughout the world
             not only for its strength               "
     but for its CIVILIZATION as well.
     A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an IDEA lives on. Ideas have ENDURANCE WITHOUT DEATH.
     LEADERSHIP and LEARNING are indispensable to each other.
     LIBERTY without LEARNING is always in PERIL and learning without liberty is always in VAIN.
     When power leads man towards arrogance, POETRY reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, Poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence.  When power corrupts, poetry cleans.
     To those people in huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to HELP them help themselves - not because the COMMUNISTS may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.  If a free society cannot help  the many who are POOR  it cannot save the few who are rich.                              '
     The MEANS by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our SCIENTIFIC POWER has outrun our SPIRITUAL POWER.  We have guided missiles and misguided men.
     

• Kennedy, Robert Francis

  1. Some men see things as they are and say why? I DREAM things that never were and say WHY NOT?
  2. Let no man think he FIGHTS his battle for others. He fights for himself and so do we all.

• Kenyatta, Jomo

  The AFRICAN is conditioned, by the cultural and social institutions of centuries, to a freedom of which Europe has little conception, and it is not in his nature to accept serfdom forever. He realizes that he must FIGHT unceasingly for his own complete EMANCIPATION; for without this he is doomed to remain the prey of rival IMPERIALISMS.

• Kepler, Johann

  1. I offer a CELESTIAL PHYSICS or philosophy in lieu of ARISTOTLE'S celestial theology or metaphysics.
  2. Everything that is or that happens in the visible SKY is felt in some hidden fashion by earth and NATURE.
  3. NATURE, which has conferred upon every animal the means of subsistence, has given ASTROLOGY and an adjunct and ally to ASTRONOMY.
  4. The DELIGHT that I took in my DISCOVERY, I shall never be able to describe in words.
  5. We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they are created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens . . . The DIVERSITY of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
  6. I had measured the HEAVENS; now I measure EARTH's SHADOWS. Mind came from the HEAVENS, Body's shadow has fallen.
  7. God always GEOMETRIZES. GEOMETRY existed before the creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of GOD . . . Geometry provided God with a model for the creation. . . Geometry is GOD Himself. 9."We see that the motions [of the planets] occur in time and place and that the Force [that binds them to the sun] emanates from its source and diffuses through the spaces of the world. All these are GEOMETRICAL things. Must not that force be subject also t other geometrical necessities?
  8. GOD, whom I can almost touch with my hands when observing the universe do I find him also in MYSELF?
  9. The UNIVERSE was stamped with the adornment of HARMONIC PROPORTIONS.
  10. The roads by which men arrive at their INSIGHTS into celestial matters seem to me almost as WORTHY of WONDER as those matters themselves.
  11. Geometria est archetypus pulcheritudinis mundi.

      GEOMETRY is the ARCHETYPE of the beauty of the world.

  12. Accordingly the movements of the heavens are nothing except a certain everlasting polyphony (intelligible, not audible) with dissonant tunings, like certain syncopations or cadences (wherewith men imitate these natural dissonances) which tends towards fixed and prescribed clauses - the single clauses having six terms (like voices) and which marks out and distinguishes the immensity of time with these notes. name). Hence it is no longer a surprise than man, the ape of his Creator, shall finally have discovered that of singing POLYPHONICALLY [per concentrum], which was unknown to the ancients namely in order that he might play the everlastingness of all created time in some short part of an hour by means of an artistic concord of many voices and that he might to some extent taste the satisfaction of God the Workman with his own works in that very sweet sense of delight elicited from this music which imitates God.
  13. There took place in this intervening time, wherein the very laborious reconstruction of the movements held me in suspense, as extraordinary augmentation of my desire and incentive for the job a reading of the HARMONIES of PTOLEMY which had been sent to me in manuscript by John George Herward, Chancellor of Bavaria, a very distinguished man and of a nature to advance philosophy and every type of learning. There, beyond my expectations and with the greatest wonder, I found approximately the whole third book given over to the same consideration of celestial harmony, fifteen hundred years ago. But indeed astronomy was far from being of age as yet; and PTOLEMY, in an unfortunate attempt, could make others subject to despair, as being one who, like Scipio in Cicero, seemed to have recited a pleasant PHYTAGOREAN DREAM rather than to have aided philosophy. But both the crudeness of the ancient philosophy and THIS EXACT AGREEMENT IN OUR MEDITATIONS, DOWN TO THE LAST HAIR, OVER AN INTERVAL OF FIFTEEN CENTURIES. greatly strengthened me in getting on with the job. For what need is there of many men? The very nature of things, in order to reveal herself to mankind, was at work in the different interpreters of different ages; and was the finger of God - to use the Hebrew expression; and here, in the mids of two men, who had wholly given themselves up to the contemplation of nature, there was the same conception as to the configuration of the world, although neither had been the other's guide in taking the route. But now since the first light . . . .
  14. . . . . But now since [the first eight months ago, since] broad day three months ago [, and since the sun of my wonderful speculation has shone fully a few days ago]: NOTHING HOLDS ME BACK. [I am free to give myself up to the SACRED MADNESS, I am free to taunt mortals with the frank confession that I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians, in order to build of them a temple for my God, far from the territory of Egypt]. If you pardon me, I shall rejoice; if you are enraged, I shall bear up. THE DIE IS CAST, AND I AM WRITING THE BOOK - WHETHER TO BE READ BY MY CONTEMPORARIES OR BY POSTERITY MATTERS NOT. Let it await the reader for a hundred years, if god Himself has been ready for his CONTEMPLATOR for six thousand years.
  15. I too of course play games with SYMBOLS ..., but in a way that 'keeps me MINDFUL that I am only playing.

• Ketterling, Charles Franklin

  If you want to KILL any idea in the world today, get a Committee working on it.

• Keynes, Jr. Ken

  You have got to enjoy BEING
  	and stop worrying about BECOMING
  		otherwise
  		there is absolutely no end . . . 
  LOVING people are happy
  	and happy people are loving.
  The past is non-existent
  	and the future is imaginary
  You can only live NOW
  	by being in the eternal NOW moment.
  If you STUMBLE . . .  it's okay
  Just get up and go on.
  Don't be addicted to not stumbling.
  

• Keynes, John Maynard

  1. The ECONOMIC PROBLEM, as one may call it for short, the problem of want and poverty and the ECONOMIC struggle between classes and nations, is nothing but frightful muddle, a transitory and UNNECESSARY muddle.
  2. ECONOMISTS have not yet earned the RIGHT to be listened to attentively.
  3. The IDEAS of ECONOMISTS and POLITICAL PHILOSOPHERS, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. PRACTICAL MEN, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct ECONOMIST. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of IDEAS. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But sooner or later, it is ideas and not vested interests which are dangerous for good or evil.
  4. Whenever you SAVE five shillings you put a man out of work for a day.
  5. It is better a man should TYRANNIZE over his BAN BALANCE than over his fellow citizen.

• Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich

  1. Every year humanity takes a step towards COMMUNISM. Maybe not you, but at all events your grandson will surely be a communist.
  2. If someone says that WAR is necessary for revolution, one must reply that in a war the WORKING CLASSES die most of all.

• Kierkegaard, Soren

  1. LIFE can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
  2. The more one SUFFERS, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires true authority in the use of the comic, an authority which by one word transforms as by magic the reasonable creature one calls man into a carricature.
  3. What is acquired through freedom will also be accomplished. To know TRUTH follows entirely of its own accord from being truth and for that very reason it is wrong to separate knowing truth from being truth. To be truth is at one with knowing truth and Christ would never have known the truth if he had not been it; and no person knows more about the truth than he is of the truth. I only recognize the truth is truth if it becomes life in me.
  4. SPIRIT: the power in a person that has a knowledge of life.

• King, Martin Luther

  The old law about " an EYE for an EYE" leaves everybody blind.

• Kingsley, Charles

  1. A KEEPER is only a POACHER turned outside in, and a poacher a keeper turned inside out.
  2. There is something very wonderful in MUSIC. Words are wonderful enough; but music is even more wonderful. It speaks not to our thoughts as words do; it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. Music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings in us; it melts us to tears, we know not how: - it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words; just as divine, just as blessed . . . . Music has been called the speech of angels; I will go further, and call it the speech of God himself.
  3. To be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all VIRTUE.

• Kipling Rudyard

  1. I have never made a MISTAKE in my life - at least never one that I couldn't explain afterwards.
  2. A WOMAN's guess is much more certain than a man's certainty.

  3. I keep six honest serving-men
     (They taught me all I knew);
     Their names are WHAT and WHY and WHEN
     And HOW and WHERE and WHO.
     

• Kirkpatrick, Jean

  Today, anyone who expects democracy, or plenty, to come from COMMUNIST REVOLUTIONS, is either very young, very ignorant or very committed to MARXISM.

• Kirkup, James

  Out of all the world take this forest. Out of all the forest take this tree. Out of all the tree take this branch. Out of all the branches take this leaf. And on this leaf that is like no other observe this drop of rain that is like no other. And in this single drop observe the reflection of leaves and branched of the entire tree, of the forest of all the world - Thus only will you see the STARS beyond the light of day.

• Kissinger, Henry

  We are on a roller coaster to disaster. Our future is now at the mercy of a precarious political status quo in what is probably the most volatile, unstable and crisis-prone region of the world - the MIDDLE EAST.

• Klee, Paul

  We construct and keep on conctructing, yet INTUITION is still a good thing. You can do a good deal without it, but not everything. Where intuition is combined with exact research it speeds up the progress of research. Exactitude winged by intuition is at times best. But because exact research is exact research, it gets ahead even without intuition. It can be logical; it can construct. It can build bridges boldly from one thing to another. It can maintain order in the midst of turmoil.

• Klee, Victor

  The study of CONVEX SETS is a branch of GEOMETRY, ANALYSIS and LINEAR ALGEBRA that has numerous connections with other areas of mathematics and serves to UNIFY many APPARENTLY DIVERSE mathematical phenomena.

• Klein, Julius

  ADVERTISING is the key to world PROSPERITY; without it today MODERN BUSINESS would be PARALYSED.

• Kline, Morris

  1. GEOMETRY, however, supplies sustenance and meaning to bare formulas. Geometry remains the major source of rich and fruitful INTUITIONS, which in turn lend CREATIVE POWER to MATHEMATICS. Most mathematicians think in terms of GEOMETRIC SCHEMES, even though they leave no trace of that scaffolding when they present the complicated analytical structures. One can still believe Plato's statement that ' GEOMETRY DRAWS THE SOUL TOWARD TRUTH. '
  2. MATHEMATICS is a marvellous invention, but the marvel lies in the HUMAN MIND's capacity to construct understandable models of complex and seemingly unscrutable natural phenomena and thereby give man some enlightenment and power.
  3. MATHEMATICS may be the QUEEN OF THE SCIENCES and therefore entitled to royal prerogatives, but the queen who loses touch with her subjects may lose support and even be deprived of her realm. MATHEMATICIANS may like to rise into the clouds of abstract thought, but they should, and indeed they must, return to earth for nourishing food or else die of mental starvation. They are on safer and saner ground when they stay close to NATURE. As Wordsworth put it "Wisdom oft is nearer when we stoop than when we soar."

• Kliuchevsky, V.0.

  The difference between the CLEVER and the foolish is that the former always thinks and rarely speaks, while the latter always speaks and never thinks. The tongue of the former is always within reach of the thought, while the thought of the latter is beyond the reach of the tongue. In the former case the tongue is the handmaid of the thought, in the latter it is a gossip and tatletale.

• Knapp, Edward A.

  HISTORY, like tIME, does not repeat itself. "The footsteps of each age resonate uniquely down history's corridor. But in charting the course of our own age, we are wise to look for similarities and differences between our age and ages past.

• Ko, Fung

  As for BELIEF, there are things that are as clear as the sky, yet men prefer to sit under an upturned barrel.

• Koestler, Arthur

  1. Two half-truths do not make a truth and two half-CULTURES do not make a culture. ,
  2. Hitherto MAN had to live with the idea of death as an INDIVIDUAL; from now on he will have to live with the idea of its death as a species.
  3. There are a few billion planets, and among these a few million no doubt have CIVILIZATIONS more advanced than our own. They will have a different concept of REALITY.
  4. But the patience and dogged endurance of the infantrymen of SCIENCE are as INDISPENSABLE as the geniuses who form its spearhead. "The progress of science", Schiller wrote, "'takes place through a few MASTER-ARCHITECTS, or in any case through a number of GUIDING BRAINS which constantly set all the industrious labourers at work for decades". That the industrious labourers tend to form trade unions with a closed-shop policy and restrictive practices, is an apparently unavoidable development. It is no less conspicuous in the history of arts: the uninspired versifiers, the craftsmen of the novel and the stage, the mediocrities of academic painting and sculpture, they all hang on for dear life to the prevailing school and style which some genius initiated, and defend it with stubbornness and venom against heretic innovations.

• Koffka, K

  1. And the same is, of course, true of the appeal of a work of ART: we are in contact with it by virtue of its structural qualities.
  2. . . . . there are no '"acts" apart from the experiencing them; " the facts of a case" are not grasped by enumeration, but must be felt as a coherent pattern. In this sense, PERCEPTION itself is artistic. Under the impact of a mosaic of stimulations which impinge on the retinas of the eyes, the nervous system of the organism produces processes of organisation in such a way that the pattern produced is the best possible under the .prevailing conditions . . . . PERCEPTION tends towards balance and symmetry; or differently expressed: balance and symmetry are PERCEPTUAL CHARACTERISTICS of the visual world which will be realized whenever the external conditions allow it; when they do not, unbalance, lack of symmetry, will be experienced as a characteristic of objects or the whole field, together with a felt urge towards better balance.

• Kohlman, Kathryn

  I believe in MIRACLES.

• Kohn, Hans

  The ATOMIC BOMB may help to decide a future war; like any other WEAPON it solves none of the PROBLEMS that make for WAR.

• Kokyu

  It is not easy to describe the SEA with the mouth.

• Komarov, Victor G.

  This story should not be taken to mean that anything can happen in nature and that the SCIENCE of the FUTURE will have the power to explain even the impossible. What is meant is that the external world is infinitely diverse and inexhaustible, and that science will never be able to claim it knows everything.

  Our KNOWLEDGE will always be incomplete and, in the words of ACADEMICIAN G.I. Naan of Estonia, the path of scientific COGNITION is a race-track without a finish.

  The UNIVERSE is an inexhaustible source of KNOWLEDGE. But the more we know the deeper we realize the extent of what is yet unknown and the greater the probability of stunning discoveries.

  KNOWLEDGE is obtained through unabating SCIENTIFIC quest in the interests of civilization and its vital requirements. This quest is not indiscriminate, its orientation being dictated by practical needs.

• The Koran

  0 men, respect WOMEN who have borne you.

• Koyré, A.

  Still, there is nothing for which NEWTON should be held responsible or to be exact, not only Newton, but MODERN SCIENCE in general - it is the DIVISION OF OUR WORLD INTO TWO. I have just said that modern science had knocked down the barriers which separated heaven and the earth, that it had united and unified the universe. But I have also remarked that it had done so by substituting for OUR WORLD OF QUALITIES AND SENSE PERCEPTIONS, a world in which we live, love and die, another world: A WORLD OF QUANTITY, of DEIFIED GEOMETRY a room in which there is room for everything, but none for man. Hence the world of science, the real world, removed and separated itself entirely from the world of life which science had been incapable of explaining, even of explaining away by making it a 'subjective' appearance.

  Actually, these two worlds are every day - and increasingly so - united by the "praxis". However, they are separated by a chasm, for the "Theorie".

  Herein lies the tragedy of the modern spirit which "resolved the riddle of the universe", but only by replacing it by another: THE ENIGMA OF HIMSELF.

• Kramers, H.A.

  FRUITFUL CONCEPTS are those to which it is impossible to attach a WELL-DEFINED MEANING.

• Kraft, Ole Bjorn

  The great task which is set us is to strengthen the UNITED NATIONS to bring the nations together in a common effort, to acquire the proper understanding of a common destiny, and of the fact that all must contribute towards creating a more secure world. This task must be carried out in and by all nations. Today it is a duty to partake in this international effort.

• Kramers, H.A.

  My own pet notion is that in the world of HUMAN THOUGHT generally, and in PHYSICAL SCIENCES particularly, the most important and fruitful CONCEPTS are those in which it is impossible to attach a well-defined meaning. FRUITFUL CONCEPTS are those to which it is impossible to attach a WELL-DEFINED MEANING.

• Kraus, Karl

  SPEECH is the mother and not the handmaid of thought.

• Krishna

  KNOWLEDGE is better than action, but MEDITATION is better than KNOWLEDGE. RENUNCIATION OF THE FRUITS OF ACTION is still better than meditation, because peace immediately follows such renunciation.

• Krishnamurti

  HAPPINESS comes uninvited; and the moment you are conscious that you are happy, you are no longer happy.

• Kristol, Irving

  The nations of the world admire WINNERS, not losers - not even "nice losers" . . . . When a democratic nation . . . and most especially the leading democratic nation, engages interminably in Hamlet-like soliloquies on the moral dilemmas of action, the world will seek its political model elsewhere . . . .

  We know that power may indeed corrupt. We are now learning that, in the world of nations as it exists, POWERLESSNESS can be even more corrupting and demoralizing.

• Kronecker, Leopold

  Die ganzen Zahlen hat Gott gemacht; alles andere ist Menschenwerk.

  God made the INTEGERS, all else is the work of MAN.

• Kropotkin, Prince Piotr Alekseyevich

  There is no infamy in civilized society, or in the relations of the Whites toward the so-called lower races, or of the strong toward the weak, which would not have found its excuse in this formula.

• Krylov. A.N.

  MATHEMATICS, like a millstone, grinds everything placed under it and, just as you won' t get wheat flour by grinding Deadly Nightshade, you won't get the truth from the false premises even if you cover the page with FORMULAE . . . .

• Kuhn, Thomas

  Like artists, creative SCIENTISTS must occasionally be able to live in a world out of joint.

• Kupperman, Robert

  TERRORISM works so well, it seems to have become the political instrument of choice.