Quotes About Wisdom

As I looked across the table at Ronnie and watched how he studied this uncomplicated menu, I wondered if the simple answer to all bad marriages is that one outgrows the other. Maybe people shouldn't marry until they're in their fifties.

They say you know nothing at eighteen. But there are things you know at eighteen that you will never know again.

Being young is a kind of warfare in which the great enemy is experience.

In an age that valued prolonged and detailed exposition, complexity, and repetition it was astonishing that Luther should have instinctively discerned the value of brevity.

A man must himself be cleansed, before cleansing others: himself become wise, that he may make others wise; become light, and then give light: draw near to God, and so bring others near; be hallowed, then hallow them; be possessed of hands to lead others by the hand, of wisdom to give advice. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 2.71

thinking wrongly about God leads us to live wrongly.

But slowly, it happened everywhere, in the West and in the East as well, that the journey to wisdom through suffering became a global art form.

We owe to the Jews,' wrote Winston Churchill in 1920, 'a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all wisdom and learning put together.

In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable. Churchill

Study history, study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft. Churchill

Only one thing in history is certain: that Mankind is unteachable.

It is sheer laziness not compressing thought into a reasonable space

Siempre estoy dispuesto a aprender», diría Churchill en 1952, «aunque no siempre me guste que me den lecciones».

gargantuan memory for facts

Andrew Roberts

The true conquests, the only ones that cause no regret, are those made over ignorance.'68

The true conquests, the only ones that cause no regret, are those made over ignorance.

the qualities desirable in a politician, Churchill said, 'The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year Ã¢â'¬â€œ and . . . to explain why it didn't happen.

The only victories which leave no regret are those which are gained over ignorance.

It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by other people: it is reflection, meditation.

When you make some great mistake,' he philosophized, 'it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision.

There can be no spirituality, no sanctity, no truth without the female sex.

I always bring back books for the library. Books have everything in them. After the end of the world, you cannot learn a goddamned thing from a computer or a television screen.

I know it's kind of ridiculous, but I realize now how wrong that old pervert Mr. Wellins is. Almost nothing at all is ever about sex, unless you never grow up, that is. It's about love, and maybe not having it. What an old, delusional idiot he is. But what do I know? I'm just fourteen.