Cognisance Quotes & Sayings

He [the "specialist"] is one who, out of all that has to be known in order to be a man of judgment, is only acquainted with one science, and even of that one only knows the small corner in which he is an active investigator. He even proclaims it as a virtue that he takes no cognisance of what lies outside the narrow territory specially cultivated by himself, and gives the name of "dilettantism" to any curiosity for the general scheme of knowledge. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

For some crime committed by my ancestors in the dark and forgotten days, I came into the world already tarred and feathered. With shyness. It hurts terribly
every bit as much as hot tar choking every pore
and I wish I could be rid of it. But it hurts a lot less than having someone try and peel the shyness off. That's like being flayed alive. — Geraldine McCaughrean

Those who pray for your downfall are concentrating negative thoughts towards you, without taking cognisance of the slippery ground in which they are standing, which could lead to their downfall. — Michael Bassey

Here's the three-ingredient recipe for a glorious day: think a higher thought, move your feet forward, serve someone you've never served. Do those three things and your life will improve in a millisecond. — Toni Sorenson

I'm not a deeply religious person and I don't really know if there's a God or not and I don't really even care, but something out there has got to control something. Because people can put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger and live and someone else can slip on the curb and die. — Sonny Barger

I think the real problem is it's easy to persuade young kids of particular kinds of ideas, because they are flexible. — Leroy Hood

Art, even the art of fullest scope and widest vision, can never really show us the external world. All that it shows us is our own soul, the one world of which we have any real cognisance. And the soul itself, the soul of each one of us, is to each one of us a mystery. It hides in the dark and broods, and consciousness cannot tell us of its workings. Consciousness, indeed, is quite inadequate to explain the contents of personality. It is Art, and Art only, that reveals us to ourselves. — Oscar Wilde

It is essential to grasp the incontestable truth that a Marxist must take cognisance of real life, of the true facts of reality, and not cling to a theory of yesterday, which, like all theories, at best only outlines the main and the general, only comes near to embracing life in all its complexity. — Vladimir Lenin

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself. — May Sarton

Unless we have a Central Bank with adequate control of credit resources, this country is going to undergo the most severe and far reaching money panic in its history. — Jacob Schiff

What the hell was he carrying this shit around for?" the second vamp demanded.
"It's useful in making captures, subduing difficult prisoners." Pritkin shrugged.
"Then ... this is a weapon."
"Yes."
"But he was going on a date."
Pritkin looked confused. — Karen Chance

I just get up every day and do what seems like the most interesting, fun thing to do. — Jimmy Wales

If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it. — Dani Shapiro

The individual," he began in a soft and sadly philosophical tone, "is not a self-supporting universe. There are times when he comes into contact with other individuals, when he is forced to take cognisance of the existence of other universes besides himself." He — Aldous Huxley

We've organized ourselves as cultures, to a large degree, around what we agree we know. And when you have multiple ways of knowing, multiple ways of organizing, the society loses one of its deepest organizational principles. — David Weinberger

For although we know that the years pass, that youth gives way to old age, that fortunes and thrones crumble (even the most solid among them) and that fame is transitory, the manner in which - by means of a sort of snapshot - we take cognisance of this moving universe whirled along by Time, has the contrary effect of immobilising it. — Marcel Proust

The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existant and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. — Sri Aurobindo