Quotes About Wisdom

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

The problem with humans is that they are unable to handle their own intelligence.

If life's not funny, then it's just true - and that would be unacceptable.

We do not ask the right questions when we are young, so we miss the important answers. Now it is too late to ask, too late for the illuminating answers, and the unanswered questions haunt us for a lifetime.

Clearly, unless the Lord chooses to explain Himself to us, which often He does not, His motivation and purposes are beyond the reach of mortal man. What this means in practical terms is that many of our questions - especially those that begin with the word 'why' - will have to remain unanswered for the time being.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.

It's unbelievable how many things I've learned from Merlin Olsen.

Humour has to have a huge nugget of truth to be funny. You cannot laugh at something unbelievable. Whenever I say something on a lighter note, I am basically unwrapping the truth from a different perspective, and that makes it funny.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in - in 2007, we just didn't know it was uncertain. It was - uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn't know it.

One of the uncertain pleasures of adulthood, for me, has really been about confronting how little I know about the world and how much completely baffles me about the world and human behavior.

Hence the saying: One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.

Thus, though I have heard of successful military operations that were clumsy but swift, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.

According to my assessment, even if you have many more troops than others, how can that help you to victory?

The one who figures on victory at headquarters before even doing battle is the one who has the most strategic factors on his side.

But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds; and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer small pamphlets to war horses.

And I believe that the Binomial Theorem and a Bach Fugue are, in the long run, more important than all the battles of history.

Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and you know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you now Heaven and you know Earth, you may make your victory complete.

Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.

Not our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; or Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward.

Old men declare war because they have failed to solve complex political and economic problems.

Imagine how different a world might be if more leaders took time to ponder the finality of death before racing off to war.