Quotes About Wisdom

There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies, seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.

When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.

Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.

That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time.

We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.

The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.

Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.

He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.

He that thinks himself the wisest is generally the least so.

Men are born with two eyes, but only one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

Simplicity is not a simple thing.

The best things carried to excess are wrong.

You don't really want to crash down the whole universe just to satisfy your situational unease or your incapacity to see the whole picture, do you? You don't want a life based on your failure to understand life, right?

The Achilles' heel of authoritarianism is that the leader by the very nature of his position is able to ignore the wisdom of anyone "below" him—that is, anyone who stands between him and the real world. This is what authority means: immunity from competence. —Philip Slater

An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.

Old age is a shipwreck.