Quotes About Wisdom

In memory of Terry Pratchett, who showed us all how it's done

In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads--and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day-if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.

Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group…then to hell with them.

It takes character to sit with all that cash and to do nothing. I didn't get top where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.

Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.

I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.

I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don't believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody's that smart.

People calculate too much and think too little.

The best armour of old age is a well spent life perfecting it.

In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a board subject matter area) who didn't read all the time - none, zero. You'd be amazed how much Warren reads - and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.

If you don't get this elementary, but mildly unnatural, mathematics of elementary probability into your repertoire, then you go through a long life like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there.

The best armour of old age is a well spent life preceding it.

The great algorithm to remember in dealing with this tendency is simple: an idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it's easily available to you.

We have three baskets: in, out, and too tough. … We have to have a special insight, or we'll put it in the "too tough" basket.

Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you're trying to improve your cognition. Reality doesn't remind you. Why not celebrate stupidities in both categories?

To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man.

Love teaches you humility—patience—understanding.

My mother had said to me afterward, "Your father is a fool." When I asked her why, she'd shrugged. "Men generally are," she'd retorted, and changed the subject.

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness.

But knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed. We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few.

they are able to forgive themselves, as a wise man once said, for being human. That is knowing that life is hard and virtue rare, they keep the ancient faith that it is better to love than to hate, to live fully even if imperfectly.