A Quote by Thomas Aquinas

Arrive at knowledge over small streamlets, and do not plunge immediately into the ocean, since progress must go from the easier to the more difficult.

Thomas Aquinas

Quote Topics

Arrive Difficult Easier Go Immediately Knowledge More Must Ocean Over Plunge Progress Since Small

Quote Author

Thomas Aquinas
Italian - Theologian
1225 - 1274

Do not wish to jump immediately from the streams to the sea, because one has to go through easier things to the more difficult.

Thomas Aquinas

The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Those who speculate from the shore about the ocean shall know only its surface, but those who would know the depths of the ocean must be willing to plunge into it.

Meher Baba

In the spiritual life it is not necessary to have a complete map of the path in order to begin traveling. On the contrary, having such complete knowledge may actually hinder rather than help the onward march. The deeper secrets of spiritual life are unraveled to those who take risks and who make bold experiments with it. They are not meant for the idler who seeks guarantees at every step. Those who speculate from the shore about the ocean shall know only its surface, but those who would know the depths of the ocean must be willing to plunge into it.

Meher Baba

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not.

T. S. Eliot

The abundance of God is like a mighty ocean, so vast you cannot possibly exhaust it or cause a shortage for others. You can go to this inexhaustible ocean with only a small cup and bring away only that small cup of bounty and blessing. Or, if you have faith enough, you can take a bucket and bring away a bucketful. It makes no difference to the ocean. Nor does it matter how often you go. Abundance is always there.

Henry Thomas Hamblin

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

Leonardo da Vinci

Calmness is the criterion of spiritual progress. Plunge the purified mind into the Heart. Then the work is over.

Ramana Maharshi

It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would set aside all the intellectual progress of years, and plunge us back into the darkness of mediaeval disbelief.

H. P. Lovecraft

There is a line that I always loved from Lucretius. He said, "The sublime is the art of exchanging easier for more difficult pleasures." The presumption of that formulation is that the more difficult pleasures are actually better than the easier pleasures. That is why one makes the exchange.

Andrew Solomon

Ideas, as the raw material from which knowledge is produced, exist in superabundance, but that makes the production of knowledge more difficult rather than easier. Many ideas- probably most- will have to be discarded somewhere in the process of producing authenticated knowledge. Authentication is as important as the raw information itself, and the manner and speed of the authentication process can be crucial.

Thomas Sowell

Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks it own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the common stock than that which it immediately succeeds.

Charles Babbage

Opportunism towards knowledge is a utilitarian demand that knowledge must be immediately practical. Just like with sociology where we hope its purpose is to serve society, however, the true purpose of sociology lies in its impracticality. It cannot become practical or else it loses its meaning. Perhaps we should learn a different kind of knowledge: the knowledge to question knowledge.

Wang Jianwei

This all-pervading divine power of love is the ocean of knowledge, is the ocean of bliss and compassion, but above all it is the ocean of forgiveness.