Quotes About Wisdom

Jeane Kirkpatrick

Prudence keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

If you can't bite, don't show your teeth.

When three people call you an ass, put on a bridle.

There's a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.

The secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God.

I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can.

I long to see everything, to know everything, to learn everything!

To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly.

It is a sign of strength, not of weakness, to admit that you don't know all the answers.

Don't be curious of matters that don't concern you; never speak of them, and don't ask about them.

Sweet words are like honey, a little may refresh, but too much gluts the stomach.

This is the gist of what I know: Give advice and buy a foe.

Don't give advice unless you're asked.

Talking too much, too soon, and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster.

Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom.

The less said the better.

We should know what our convictions are, and stand for them. Upon one's own philosophy, conscious or unconscious, depends one's ultimate interpretation of facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one's subjective principles. As the man is, so will be his ultimate truth.

A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer road to God than a deep searching of the sciences.

I long to put the experience of fifty years at once into your young lives, to give you at once the key to that treasure chamber every gem of which has cost me tears and struggles and prayers, but you must work for these inward treasures yourselves.

Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.

Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, our own meditation must form our judgement.

Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral, and subject to chance.

Sex at eighty-four is terrific, especially the one in the winter.