Quotes About Wisdom

Addison had written in words reproduced by Murray. "The philosopher, the saint, or the hero, the wise, the good, or the great man, very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light.

With a chuckle, Churchill had replied: "Neither look for nor expect gratitude but rather get whatever comfort you can out of the belief that your effort is constructive in purpose.

in the fears and follies of man, but on his reason.…

But when we reflect how difficult it is to move or inflect the great machine of society, how impossible to advance the notions of a whole people suddenly to ideal right, we see the wisdom of Solon's remark that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear, and that will be chiefly to reform the waste of public money, and thus drive away the vultures who prey on it, and improve some little on old routines." Even

Experience teaches us that men who are equally wise and good may differ in political as well

Of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes it with so silent, yet so baneful, a tooth, as indolence," he told one of his daughters.24 Time spent at study was never wasted. "Knowledge," Jefferson said, "indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.

in the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment, the Scottish writer and politician Andrew Fletcher brilliantly linked music and civic life, writing, "I knew a very wise man…[ who] believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.

It is an unrepresentative city….They are so darn sure they are right on everything." The conventional wisdom in Manhattan, Bush believed, often failed to take opposing views into account except to dismiss such opinions as uninformed, prejudiced, and just plain wrong.

Broadly put, philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

You've just got to pick the man you think is best on the basis of his past history

Plenty of philosophical men live in abstract regions, debating types and shadows. The rarer sort is the reader and thinker who can see the world whole.

To know what has come before is to be armed against despair.

fulcrum stood the brilliant but fallible

She summarized: "So. Don't get shitfaced, don't fist her ass, enjoy.

Evil is relatively rare; ignorance is epidemic.

The tragedy of being old is you can no longer apply what has taken you so long to learn.

I am fifty-five years old, and believe God is willing to listen if we speak clearly and to the point. His responses are manifested, not in immediate answers or results, but in dots everywhere around us that need to be connected intelligently.

Of all the knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves, are the most important.

All truth is given by revelation, either general or special, and it must be received by reason. Reason is the God-given means for discovering the truth that God discloses, whether in his world or his Word. While God wants to reach the heart with truth, he does not bypass the mind.

A truly humble man is sensible of his natural distance from God; of his dependence on Him; of the insufficiency of his own power and wisdom; and that it is by God's power that he is upheld and provided for, and that he needs God's wisdom to lead and guide him, and His might to enable him to do what he ought to do for Him.

Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls.

One of these grand defects, as I humbly conceive, is this, that children are habituated to learning without understanding.

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live... - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

It's healthy to say uncle when your bone's about to break.