Quotes About Wisdom

For if there is one lesson worth retaining from the travails of the Cold War and the miseries it brought in its wake, it is the folly of seeking simple answers to complicated questions. It is a lesson which governments still show no sign of learning.

For if there is one lesson worth retaining from the travails of the Cold War and the miseries it brought in its wake, it is the folly of seeking simple answers to complicated questions.

Another Cercle member remembered Sary advising him to masturbate instead of wasting his time with young women.

Anger, the Stoics said, was a short madness.

scoffing cometh not of wisdom...

I was already at an age when putting off anything was a bad idea.

The only thing I know is that I know nothing' Socrates

The greatest danger to both society and the individual, we learn from Socrates, is the suspension of critical thought.

Marcus Aurelius 121–180 'The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts' Adopted

Epicurus also taught that wisdom was the greatest virtue, for through it we could learn which pleasures to seek and which to avoid. Moreover, he professed that no one could be completely happy unless they lived a virtuous life, not because virtue was good in itself, but because it led to pleasurable consequences and the absence of pain and fear.

Forget the old advice to think twice. Superforecasters often think thrice—and sometimes they are just warming up to do a deeper-dive analysis.

The difference between heavyweights and amateurs, she said, is that the heavyweights know the difference between a 60?40 bet and a 40?60 bet.

if you have the time to think before making a big decision, do so—and be prepared to accept that what seems obviously true now may turn out to be false later.

For those who hope that we can become collectively wiser, it was a bewildering fracas that looked less like a debate between great minds and more like a food fight between rival fraternities.

warrior-poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

We have all been too quick to make up our minds and too slow to change them.

there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction….Learn from every mistake because every experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to teach you and force you into being who you are." Everything happens for a reason. Everything has a purpose.

Doubt is not a fearful thing," Feynman observed, "but a thing of very great value.

Epistemic uncertainty is something you don't know but is, at least in theory, knowable.

People who argue do not understand; And people who understand do not argue.

Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.

Words contain the "souls" or minds of people in the past; as such, they tell the story of consciousness.

Imagination pointed toward truth but could not disclose it directly.

We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.