Wisdom Quotations

Wisdom: What quotations are revered for. All quotations in this category contain timeless bits of wisdom and many are quite provacative

Showing 181 through 216 of 379 quotations in this category.

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

-Thomas Jefferson

"Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties."

-Emil Nolde

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."

-George Bernard Shaw

"Existence precedes essence."

-Jean-Paul Sartre

"If men were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking, they would lose the capacity for asking all the unanswerable questions upon which every civilization is founded."

-Hannah Arendt

"If we wish to live in the light of reason, we must follow rules or principles; for that is what being rational is."

-Isaiah Berlin

"Why should there be the method of science? There is not just one way to build a house, or even to grow tomatoes. We should not expect something as motley as the growth of knowledge to be strapped to one methodology."

-Ian Hacking

"The person who elevates simplicity to a supreme value is like the architect who uses a straight-edge against a fluted column: his calculations won't build a sound building, and he will leave out much of the beauty and value of what is there before him."

-Martha Nussbaum

"There is absolutely no criterion for truth. For reason, senses, ideas, or whatever else may exist are all deceptive."

-Carneades

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."

-René Descartes

"There is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible."

-René Descartes

"No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience."

-John Locke

"To be is to be perceived."

-George Berkeley

"A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."

-David Hume

"Without speculation there is no good and original observation."

-Charles Darwin

"It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment."

-Albert Einstein

"All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self-evident."

-Schopenhauer

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

-Gandhi

"You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note."

-Doug Floyd

"Yesterday is but today's memory, tomorrow is today's dream."

-Kahlil Gibran

"It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end."

-Ursula K. LeGuin

"What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."

-Robert Kennedy

"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place."

-Mark Twain

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

-T. S. Eliot

"Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

-Sun-Tzu

"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."

-Omar Bradley

"Every man I meet is in some way my superior."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You have to lead people gently toward what they already know is right."

-Philip Crosby

"The investigation of Nature in the unbiased light of reason is our only guide to truth."

-Giordano Bruno

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

-Nietzsche

"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."

-Henry David Thoreau

"A very popular error—having the courage of one’s convictions. It is rather a matter of having the courage for an attack upon one’s convictions. Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

"The rules have changed. True power is held by the person who possesses the largest bookshelf, not gun cabinet or wallet."

-Anthony J. D'Angelo

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."

-Dale Carnegie

"Stupid people always think they are right. Wise people listen to advice."

-Proverbs 12:15

"Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy."

-Dean Koontz