Wisdom Quotations

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

Showing 37 through 72 of 379 quotations in this category.

"You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do."

-Olin Miller

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

-Winston Churchill

"We tell lies when we are afraid, ... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger."

-Tad Williams

"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

"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

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

-Graham Greene

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

-Elbert Hubbard

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

-Winston Churchill

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction."

-Ernst F. Schumacher

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

-George Bernard Shaw

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

-Anatole France

"Some people speak from experience; others, from experience, don't speak."

-unknown

"There are two kinds of men who never amount to very much: Those who cannot do what they are told, and those who can do nothing else."

-Cyrus H. K. Curtis

"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

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

-H. L. Mencken

"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

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

"The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work."

-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."

-Chinese Proverb

"It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality."

-Arnold Bennett

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."

-Mark Twain

"To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it."

-George Bernard Shaw

"I don't know what will be used in the next world war, but the 4th will be fought with stones."

-Albert Einstein

"I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't."

-Mark Twain

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

-Benjamin Franklin

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

-Albert Einstein

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."

-Albert von Szent-Gyorgy

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

-George Bernard Shaw

"Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exists because of their silent consent."

-Bruno Jasienski

"There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions."

-Charles P. Steinmetz

"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

"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 make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect."

-Edward Gibbon

"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

"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