Quotes About Wisdom

In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science.

To die of old age...is a rare, singular, and extraordinary death. It is the last and extremist kind of dying. It encourages people to lead a life devoted to not dying, which is really another way of not living.

I had begun with the comforting conclusion that books are the tongue of divine wisdom, and had ended only with the thin hunch that all books are grand follies, destined forever to be misunderstood.

Rock to gravel to dust to mud to rock and so the world goes, as his mother used to say when he demanded reasons or explanation as to how the world got to be this way or that. The world is, she would say. It just is, boy.

He had avoided what he regarded as some obvious errors of life, such as politics and golf. But

You see, reason, gentlemen, is a fine thing, that is unquestionable, but reason is only reason and satisfies only man's reasoning capacity, while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Please don't ask how I know such things, please: where fish are concerned I know everything - or as good as - & besides, it's rude to interrupt when I am in the middle of telling you how that sorry crumpled dory began to flare up

and they were deeply moved not so much by the poetry as by their sensitivity to poetry; not so much by the genius of the poem as by their wisdom in understanding the poem; not in knowing the poem but in knowing the poem demonstrated the higher side of themselves and of the Japanese spirit—

He had avoided what he regarded as some obvious errors of life, such as politics and golf.

Cynicism makes you feel smart, I know it, even when you aren't smart.

When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again--which is a loss. But to shield yourself--as I didn't do--seems to be an even greater error, since what's lost is the truth of your parents' life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.

All this is a natural part of the aging process, in which you find yourself with less to do and more opportunities to eat your guts out regretting everything you have done.

I don't look in mirrors anymore. It's cheaper than surgery.

Life is full of surprises, a wise man said, and would not be worth having if it were not.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying as a present to myself but haven't made much progress there—though I need to.

I like writing that's smart on the page.

I believe I have done these two things. Faced down regret. Avoided ruin. And I am still here to tell about it.

for your life to be worth anything you must sooner or later face the possibility of terrible, searing regret.

It is we ourselves who are responsible for knowing the truth

Worldly wisdom teaches that is it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

Of course, coaches are Humans. They tend to do things the way they have always been done, because those decisions will not be second-guessed by the boss. As Keynes noted, following the conventional wisdom keeps you from getting fired.

The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers.

What you learn from others you can use to follow. What you learn for yourself you can use to lead.

Vicarious learning from the experiences of others saves making errors yourself, but I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the study of failures. There are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more efficient.