Quotes About Wisdom

Conclusions that philosophers first establish by way of torturous reasoning have a way, over time, of leaking into shared knowledge.

People don't grow old. When they stop growing, they become old.

If there is anything natural and inevitable about the aging process, it cannot be known until the chains of our old beliefs are broken.

We know less when we erroneously think we know than when we recognize that we don't.

But explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge. A Freudian would claim to know what they have and I lack, but intelligence is not situated in the crotch—even if you can write one of Virginia Woolf's long mellifluous musical sentences about the subtle subjugation of women in the snow with your willie.

explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge.

The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future.

Don't mistake a lightbulb for the moon, and don't believe that the moon is useless unless we land on it.

One of my goals in life is to become truly rabbinical, to be able to answer closed questions with open questions, to have the internal authority to be a good gatekeeper when intruders approach, and to at least remember to ask, "Why are you asking that?

Everyone is influenced by those things that precede formal education, that come out of the blue and out of everyday life. Those excluded influences I call the grandmothers.

We know less when we erroneously think we know than when we recognize that we don't...the language of bold assertion is simpler, less taxing, than the language of nuance and ambiguity and speculation.

Adulthood is made up of a prudent anticipation and a philosophical memory that make you navigate more slowly and steadily.

the Men Who Knew came out of the woodwork.

Jewish tradition holds that some questions are more significant than their answers.

But explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge.

Life is short, but it is wide. Genevieve Whitman taught me that.

Say there is no truth. Say there are only scraps that we feebly try to sew togethr.

I wish I knew then what I know now - and still had those thighs!

Zip it kiddo. Don't ever admit you know a thing about cooking or it'll be used against you later in life.

Books are living things with blood and bones, and it breaks our heart when people dissect them.

Every time I thought that I was put together, I realized that we're always putting ourselves together, gathering the world in, letting it sift down and form us.

Life is short, but it is wide. This too shall pass.

Thought that is worth calling thought has no mercy on itself, that is the dreadful proof of its quality.

Know your mind and see your nature.