Quotes About Wisdom

Socrates: "Know thyself." For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the prophets, there are only two kinds of people: saints, who know they are sinners; and sinners, who think they are saints.

St. Thomas is as practical and plain and reasonable in ethics as Aristotle, or Confucius, or your uncle.

Plato was right when he said that all evil comes from ignorance. He forgot that ignorance also comes from evil.

Right Response to Reality—the Three R's—is the fundamental principle of morality, of sanctity, and of sanity.

When the worldly toys in which we foolishly place our hopes for happiness are taken away from us, our foolishness is also taken away, and this brings us closer to true happiness, which is not in worldly things but in wisdom.

St. Thomas mentions the three things necessary to attain any end, earthly or Heavenly: knowledge, love, and presence;

Principles without facts are empty, but facts without principles are blind.

For he believed not only that there was all truth somewhere but also that there was some truth everywhere.

Angels just see it all at once; they see all the individual applications of the general principle in the general principle

T]o scorn the dictate of reason is to scorn the commandment of God (I-II,19,5).

Peter Kreeft

A classic is like a cow: it gives fresh milk every morning. A classic is a book that rewards endlessly repeated reading. A classic is like the morning, like nature herself: ever young, ever renewing. No, not even like nature, for she, like us, is doomed to die. Only God is ever young, and only the Book he inspired never grows old.

Socrates: So was I. Bertha: Are you saying you're as great as him, then? Socrates: No, no, on the contrary, I'm assuming just the opposite!

Some philosophers

Cicero famously said, you have no choice between having a philosophy and not having one, only between having a good one and having a bad one. And not to admit that you have a philosophy at all is to have a bad one. For it is one that does not know itself. So how could it know anything else, especially us?

Peter Kreeft

democracy is probably intrinsically the best form of government, not because all men are equal in wisdom and virtue, or because all men are so good and wise that they should be given as much power as possible, but because all men are so foolish and wicked that no one should be given very great power over others.

Socrates says we must be either fools because we think we are wise, or wise because we know we are fools. Christ says we must be either sinners who think we are saints, or saints who know we are sinners. Even

Hence the fact that some happen to doubt about articles of faith is not due to the uncertain nature of the truths, but to the weakness of human intelligence;

bad fortune is really just as good for you as good fortune is, in fact, it is better, because, he says, bad fortune teaches, while good fortune deceives. When

Socrates' point is that there are only two kinds of people in this world: the wise, who know they are fools, and fools, who think they are wise. Wisdom

Good theology is not the knowledge of theology but the knowledge of God. Bad theology is the theology of the theologian who died and went to Heaven and at the gates of Heaven God offered him the choice between Heaven and a theology lecture on Heaven, and he chose the lecture.

For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern mind, the cardinal problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.

wisdom, which is the habit of distinguishing appearance from reality.)