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The end of knowledge is power;
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“The end of knowledge is power;”

Thomas Hobbes

Source
De Corpore
Date
1655
Meaning

Meaning of “The end of knowledge is power;”

Hobbes defines philosophical inquiry by practical use: knowledge of causes matters because it enables people to produce effects and accomplish things.

Source context

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Thomas Hobbes, De Corpore / Elements of Philosophy, Part I, Chapter I, section 6, represented in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Project Gutenberg #73877. 'The end of knowledge is power' is immediately developed through the use of theorems for construction and action; it remains Hobbes's seventeenth-century account of philosophy's utility.

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Learning Quotes About Curiosity, Study & ExperiencePhilosophyShortThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionReason
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My trade and art is to live.
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“My trade and art is to live.”

Michel de Montaigne · Essays of Montaigne — Book II · 1580
Meaning & context

Montaigne makes lived experience itself the central field of inquiry, treating ordinary life as material for reflection rather than a distraction from philosophy.

Source details

Essays of Montaigne, Book II, Chapter VI, “Use Makes Perfect,” Charles Cotton translation, W. C. Hazlitt 1877 edition, Project Gutenberg #3600. “My trade and art is to live” occurs while Montaigne defends speaking from his own sense, experience and practice. It remains early-modern autobiographical essay and moral reflection rather than modern therapeutic or behavioral-science evidence.

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All men by nature desire to know.
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“All men by nature desire to know.”

Aristotle · Metaphysics · c. 350 BCE
Meaning & context

Aristotle treats the desire for knowledge as a basic human tendency, giving curiosity a foundational place in the movement from perception toward understanding.

Source details

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter I, W. D. Ross translation (1908), validated Wikisource scan leaf 21. 'All men by nature desire to know' opens the work before the discussion of sensation, memory, experience, art and knowledge. This remains ancient philosophy mediated by translation, not a modern empirical finding about cognition.

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The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.
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“The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.”

Blaise Pascal · The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal · posthumous
Meaning & context

Human judgment includes forms of intuition, feeling, and commitment that cannot always be reduced to explicit logical argument.

Source details

Pensées; Pascal contrasts forms of knowing associated with the heart and with discursive reason.

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Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,
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“Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,”

David Hume · A Treatise of Human Nature · 1739
Meaning & context

Hume argues that reasoning can inform means and consequences but does not by itself supply the motivating ends that move a person to act.

Source details

A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Section III, “Of the Influencing Motives of the Will,” Project Gutenberg #4705. The frozen catalog retains the opening clause “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” from a longer sentence. It remains Hume’s historical philosophical thesis rather than contemporary empirical psychology.

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Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into gold.
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“Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”

Mark Twain · What Is Man? · 1906
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Old Man
Meaning & context

The metaphor distinguishes growth from limitless transformation: training can develop capacities, but the dialogue also insists that development occurs within constraints.

Source details

What Is Man?, opening machine-and-metal analogy; the Old Man uses iron and gold to argue for limits within his deterministic model of human development.

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Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
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“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

Charles Darwin · The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex · 1871
Meaning & context

Darwin warns that limited knowledge can make sweeping certainty easier, while deeper inquiry often exposes how much remains unresolved.

Source details

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Introduction, represented by Project Gutenberg #2300. Darwin writes that 'ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge' while rejecting confident claims that human origins could never be solved by science. The frozen quotation capitalizes the clause as a standalone sentence although it appears after a colon in the witness; it remains a historical scientific argument, not a universal quantitative law about confidence.