Quotes About Wisdom

I felt as if I learned a few things. I learned that it's sometimes okay to think like a weenie, so long as you don't act like one—at least not all the time. I learned that it's okay to be wrong, as long as you can admit it and are willing to listen to those who may know better.

T]he bottom line is that I made the right decision. So maybe it's okay to think like a weenie sometimes, so long as you don't act like one. There's grand philosophy in there someplace.

If I ran into a 19-year-old version of myself, I'd just tell her to live, full out. I might also tell her to go ahead and have a few babies and not worry about the timing of it.

I conceived 'All Is Song' as a modernised, loosely interpreted version of Socrates's life.

Intuitive versus analytical? That's a foolish choice. It's foolish, just like trying to choose between being realistic or idealistic. You need both in life.

The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.

We're blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We're not designed to know how little we know.

It's remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.

It's not the things you don't know that trip you up. It's the things you think you know, but you don't. You fail to ask a certain question because you believe you know the answer. Separating your information from your assumptions can be very tricky business.

Very smart people are often tricked by hackers, by phishing. I don't exclude myself from that. It's about being smarter than a hacker. Not about being smart.

It's very important that we don't make the same mistakes twice. That's a big part of improvement.

To me, growing old is great. It's the very best thing - considering the alternative.

Life is very much about making the best decisions you can. So I think chess is very valuable.

There is no method but to be very intelligent.

Mortality is very different when you're 20 to when you're 50.

I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I've gotten from so many of the adult elders.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom, but I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control. And it didn't have any inherent wisdom. I quickly realized that you either became a power or you were crushed.

I have known Casemiro for a very long time and in those years he has gained a lot of experience.

No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

I'm just a vessel of information.