Quotes About Wisdom

Yes, there is a Divinity, one from which we must never turn aside for the guidance of our huge inward life and of the share we have as well in the life of all men. It is called the truth.

A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books.

An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.

We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.

The philosopher says that God's knowledge is the measure of things, and that things are the measure of man's knowledge.

It is vain to say that enlightened statesmen will always be able to adjust their interests. Enlightened men will not always be at the helm.

Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.

We presuppose two things: that there is yet to be learned infinitely more than is now known, and that man can learn it.

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

The theories of men changed from day to day. Much that is taught new will tomorrow be in the discard, but the word of the Lord will endure forever.

When a man makes a reverent face before a face that is no face - that is idol worship!

you should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake' ...

You should be a billionaire, Randy. Thank god you're not. Why do you say that? Oh, because then you'd be a highly intelligent man who never has to make difficult choices - who never has to exert his mind. It is a state much worse than being a moron.

every human being who is born into this universe is like a child who has been given a key to an infinite Library, written in cyphers that are more or less obscure, arranged by a scheme—of which we can at first know nothing, other than that there does appear to be some scheme.

In your Primer you have a resource that will make you highly educated, but it will never make you intelligent. That comes from life. Your life up to this point has given you all the experience you need to be intelligent, but you have to think about those experiences. If you don't think about them, you'll be psychologically unwell. If you do think about them, you will become not merely educated but intelligent.

The Bibliotheque du Roi then gives you the closest thing that currently exists to God's understanding of the world. And yet with a bigger library we could come ever so much closer.

Reader, if you don't know what a database is, rest assured that an explanation of the concept would in no way increase your enjoyment in reading this account.

I don't know how my face conveyed that information, or what kind of internal wiring in my grandmother's mind enabled her to accomplish this incredible feat. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance. Condense fact from the vapor of nuance. Hiro has never forgotten the sound of her speaking those words, the feeling that came over him as he realized for the first time how smart Juanita was.

Hmmm.... supposing is a dangerous practice

Sergeant Major," Arjun said quietly, "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Yur snorted. "Is that a fancy way of saying it's above my pay grade, sir?

You're just clever enough to be stupider than if you weren't clever at all

It's a wonderful thing to be clever, and you should never think otherwise, and you should never stop being that way. But what you learn, as you get older, is that there are a few billion other people in the world all trying to be clever at the same time, and whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost—swallowed up in the ocean—unless you are doing it along with like-minded people who will remember your contributions and carry them forward.

For between true science and erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle. —HOBBES, Leviathan

But at last I came to understand that I was making it too complicated. For you, this is no mingling at all; for you the Book of Revelation, the ramblings of Hermes Trismegistus, and Principia Mathematica are all signatures torn from the same immense Book.