Quotes About Wisdom

the genuinely humane no generation learns from the foregoing

Once we overcome our biases about the past, we will realize that the people we see as primitive have a lot to teach us, that looking back can help us to move forward.

People change when they get older. They get more . . . cautious. They've been hit harder and more often. It doesn't mean they're stupid or timid—Mom

Of one thing I am certain: No single people, tradition, religion, governmental form, ethical program, moral code, or civilization has had sufficient wisdom and goodness to set the pattern and govern he world in the was of peace, decency and mutual respect. I do not believe God ever intended it to be that way. He wants us to reach out and learn from the wisdom he has given to humanity over broad sweeps of time and place and personality.

We need to learn from one another. Of one thing I am certain: No single people, tradition, religion, governmental form, ethical program, moral code, or civilization has had sufficient wisdom and goodness to set the pattern and govern the world in the ways of peace, decency, and mutual respect. I do not believe God ever intended it to be that way. He wants us to reach out and learn from the wisdom he has given to humanity over broad sweeps of time and place and personality.

In some matters, he said, it is better to be intellectually uncertain rather than superficially sure. This will still leave us with a great deal to be certain about, while maintaining a humility to learn.

Only fools accept the obvious and go no further; use your brain, Jilly.

Realization comes when we honestly accept the mistakes of the past and that automatically builds the responsibility that will prevent us from repeating those same mistakes.

We won't attain maturity unless we cultivate the wisdom to discriminate which deeds of our ancestors we need to reject and which achievements we need to take inspiration from.

If learning lessons from history is a mark of enlightenment, so is breaking free from it.

Being ignorant is truly bliss compared to being misinformed, especially if you're aware of the depths of your own ignorance.

if wisdom was easy any fool would be able to do it.

Not a lad anymore; old flesh doesn't heal like young. Learn to like it; when you're hurting, you're not dead.

the swift daring strength of his youth and the steady hand of his ripe manhood we have had, but the wisdom of his deep age is taken from us and that we will never have, spilled with the blood he shed for us! Mourn, then, mourn! For he is lost and gone and we will send him to the sky and the earth and the sea.

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

The Abbe Paul looked at Agnes rather as Alain had, with respect. 'How sensible. People are desperate to probe mysteries which for the most part are best left unprobed. It is the modern curse: this demented drive to explain every blessed thing. Not everything can be explained. Nor should be, I think.

Beware, beware of those who care,' as some wise person said. Not that I'm suggesting there is anything wrong with caring. But as Granny Maud used to say, 'Fine words butter no parsnips,' and she might have added, 'Caring should be felt and not heard.

Know thyself. Then know that you are a human being, a member of the species of mankind. So know first and foremost that you do not know, and what you claim to know is almost certainly a means of distracting yourself from what you really know.

without great wisdom and strength humankind should pray to be spared the experience of love.

distinguished scholars and

If you get to live your life over, make the same mistakes -- only sooner.

Festering with regret changes not one thing.

We are tricked by a phenomenon of time: hours and days pass slowly, but years pass quickly.

Because the comic hero deviates, by the nature of his role, from social norms, he leads an alienated existence: he is slapped, reviled, insulted, treated as an outcast, disinherited. Yet he bears everything with the rigid patience of the wise Fool, whose foolery is in his passport to safety. (In his introduction to Habiby's Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist)