Wisdom Quotations

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

Showing 109 through 144 of 379 quotations in this category.

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

-J. B. S. Haldane

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."

-Douglas Adams

"In the struggle against evil, there is no shame in defeat -- only in not fighting."

-Steven Hart

"If the individual is narrowly concentrated on the goal, to the exclusion of other relevant aspects of the problem situation, he is often unable to achieve a solution. The creative thinker must stand sufficiently detached from his work."

-Mary Henle

"Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached."

-Simone Weil

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

-Carneades

"Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing."

-Joshua Reynolds

"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

"To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer."

-Robert Heinlein

"Existence precedes essence."

-Jean-Paul Sartre

"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite."

-Sam Levenson

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

-George Bernard Shaw

"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

"The weather-cock on the church spire, though made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it... did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind."

-Heinrich Heine

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."

-Henry David Thoreau

"He only profits from praise who values criticism."

-Heinrich Heine

"The creator is both detached and committed, free and yet ensnared, concerned but not too much so. ... If motivation is too strong the person is blinded; if the objective situation is too tightly structured, the person sees none of its alternative possiblities."

-Robert Macleod

"Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius."

-Benjamin Disraeli

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

-Emil Nolde

"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

"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

"Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. . . . the human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive."

-Frank Herbert

"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything."

-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."

-Mark Twain

"Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common."

-Denis Diderot

"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err."

-Mahatma Gandhi

"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."

-Confucious

"Time does not relinquish its rights, either over human beings or over mountains."

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

-Galbraith's Law

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

-Thomas Jefferson

"It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go."

-Bertrand Russell

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite."

-William Blake

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

-Albert Einstein

"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary."

-Winston Churchill

"Mind is locked in matter like the spirit Ariel in a cloven pine. Like Ariel, men struggle to escape the drag of the matter they inhabit, yet it is the spirit that they fear."

-Loren Eiseley