Quotes About Wisdom

por lo poco que el espíritu necesita para contentarse, puede medirse la extensión de lo que ha perdido.

Such minds, when they give themselves up to the uncontrolled ferment of [the divine] substance, imagine that, by drawing a veil over self-consciousness and surrendering understanding they become the beloved of God to whom He gives wisdom in sleep; and hence what they in fact receive, and bring to birth in their sleep, is nothing but dreams.

The real is the rational, and the rational is the real.

Todos los atenienses estaban iniciados en los misterios eleusinos; solo Sócrates no lo estaba, porque quería conservar las manos libres para que, si fundaba algo en el pensamiento, no le acusasen de haberlo sabido por los misterios eleusinos. Sócrates sabía que la ciencia y el arte no brotan de los misterios y que la sabiduría jamás se halla en el secreto. Antes bien, la verdadera ciencia está en el campo abierto de la conciencia.

Aufklärung des Verstands macht zwar klüger, aber nicht besser.

It is not the purpose of philosophy to edify

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

daß diese Furcht zu irren schon der Irrtum selbst ist.

we ought to think with the learned, and speak with the vulgar .

truly my opinion is, that all our opinions are alike vain and uncertain. what we approve today, we condemn tomorrow. we keep a stir about knowledge, and spend our lives in the pursuit of it, when, alas! we know nothing all the while: nor do i think it possible for us to ever know anything in this life. our faculties are too narrow and too few. nature certainly never intended us for speculation.

In vain do we extend our view into the heavens, and pry into the entrails of the earth, in vain do we consult the writings of learned men, and trace the dark footsteps of antiquity; we need only draw the curtain of words, to behold the fairest tree of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of our hand.

I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.

I am old and do not suffer fools gently and if you expect me to review your work, it better meet my stringent standards for logic and science.

A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remotest centuries.

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.

Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.

a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.