Wisdom Quotations

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

Showing 73 through 108 of 379 quotations in this category.

"I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect."

-Edward Gibbon

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."

-George Bernard Shaw

"When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

-Jonathan Swift

"I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me."

-George Bernard Shaw

"Never explain. Your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."

-Elbert Hubbard

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

-Albert Einstein

"There was never an angry man that thought his anger unjust."

-St. Francis De Sales

"Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge."

-Cicero

"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it."

-Andrew Carnegie

"Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want."

-Clive Barnes

"When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it."

-Anatole France

"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes."

-Winston Churchill

"The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is."

-George Bernard Shaw

"The harder you fight to hold on to specific assumptions, the more likely there's gold in letting go of them."

-John Seely Brown

"We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions."

-Isaac Bashevis Singer

"The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its caution. It thus reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. In the language of morality: Humility."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

"When you're arguing with a fool, make sure he isn't doing the same thing."

-unknown

"Only after the last tree has been cut down,
only after the last river has ben poisoned,
only after the last fish has been caught,
only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."

-Cree Indian Prophecy

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism."

-Winston Churchill

"There are two kinds of truth, small truth and great truth. You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth."

-Niels Bohr

"Everything happens for a reason; If you can't find a reason for something, there's a reason for that."

-Chris Levi

"Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possess one."

-Johann Wolfgang Van Goethe

"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind--that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking."

-Henry Louis Mencken

"Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt."

-Graham Greene

"It's important to remember that just because there are crooks, zealots and morons supporting a position, it does not automatically follow that the position is wrong."

-Jan D. Wolter

"If we would please in society, we must be prepared to be taught many things we know already by people who do not know them."

-Sebastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort

"Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few."

-Benjamin Franklin

"We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism."

-J. Robert Oppenheimer

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

-Eric Hoffer

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."

-Eric Hoffer

"Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, except in so far as it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it."

-Isaac Newton

"The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle."

-Albert Einstein

"Americans of good faith across the political spectrum know that suppression and intimidation of political diversity is a dangerous trend. Ideas must be challenged in the course of free and open discussion for democracy to survive."

-Richard Bey

"Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there."

-E. H. Gombrich

"A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."

-Proverbs 15:1

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

-Isaac Asimov