Quotes About Wisdom

Gilks sighed. 'You're a clever man, Cjelli, I grant you that,' he said, 'but you make the same mistake a lot of clever people do of thinking everyone else is stupid.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term future perfect has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.

A five-week sand blizzard? said Deep Thought haughtily. You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff.

Trilllian had come to suspect that the main reason he had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did.

But - but - but! said Dirk, thumping the table in frustration, don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.

He had been told that when looking for a good oracle, it was best to find the oracle that other oracles went to.

We have a saying up here. 'Life is wasted on the living.

On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were fat more intelligent than man, for precisely the same reason

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

He headed to the outer Eastern rim of the Galaxy, where it was said, wisdom and truth were to be found, most particularly on planet Hawalius, which was a planet of oracles and seers and soothsayers and also take-out pizza parlors, because most mystics were completely incapable of cooking for themselves.

Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is.

The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn't that true?" "It would be hard to learn much less than my pupils," came a low growl from somewhere on the table, "without undergoing a prefrontal lobotomy.

He knew that one of the things he was supposed to do as a parent was to show trust in his child, to build a sense of trust and confidence into the bedrock of relationship between them. He had had a nasty feeling that that might be an idiotic thing to do, but he did it anyway, and sure enough it had turned out to be an idiotic thing to do. You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

ART: None. The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn't a mirror big enough—see point one.

Trillian had come to suspect that the main reason he had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did.

deciding that just as discretion was the better part of valor, so was cowardice the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet.

Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.' 'And are you?' 'No. That's where it all falls down, of course.' 'Pity,' said Arthur with sympathy. 'It sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise.

Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

Acontecimientos importantes de la Historia de la Galaxia, II: Desde los orígenes de esta Galaxia, grandes civilizaciones han surgido y desaparecido y muerto tan a menudo que resulta profundamente tentador pensar que la vida en ella debe ser a) algo así como un mareo, un vértigo en el espacio, en el tiempo, en la historia o cosa parecida, y b) estúpida.

Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.

You know because you've been it, and I know because I'm dead and it gives one such a wonderfully uncluttered perspective.

So you see, the major difference between someone of my age and someone of yours is not how much I know, but how much I've forgotten

The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn't that true? 'It would be hard to learn much less than my pupils,' came a low growl from somewhere on the table, 'without undergoing a pre-frontal lobotomy.