Quotes About Wisdom

For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.

I find that I can have no enjoyment in the World but continual drinking of Knowledge - I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world

In Endymion I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.

Shakespeare permeated his whole being, and his influence is to be detected not in a resemblance of style, for Shakespeare can have no imitators, but in a broadening view of life, and increased humanity.

at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason

The more I have known the more have I lov'd.

Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!

the further idea that to fit it for such tasks two things above all are necessary, growth in human sympathy through the putting down of self, and growth in knowledge and wisdom through strenuous study and meditation

Fino a che una cosa non ci ammala, non la capiamo.

Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

Je suggère que tu mettes de côté une partie des sommes que tu investis à fonds perdus dans l'industrie des boissons alcooliques.

George había sido lo bastante listo para largarse de la escuela lo antes posible. No quería acabar como aquel tipo.

Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.

Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding

There is an old saying, or should be, that it is a wise economist who recognizes the scope of his own generalizations.

Galbraith's First Law: Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

The recurrent and sadly erroneous belief that effortless enrichment is an entitlement associated with what is thought to be exceptional financial perspicacity and wisdom is not something that yields to legislative remedy.

Scholars gather in scholarly assemblages to hear in elegant statement what all have heard before. Again, it is not a negligible rite, for its purpose is not to convey knowledge but to beatify learning and the learned.

I can measure the motions of bodies," Sir Isaac Newton once observed, "but I cannot measure human folly.

Out of that belief, thus instilled, then comes action—the bidding up of values, whether in land, securities, or, as recently, art. The upward movement confirms the commitment to personal and group wisdom. And so on to the moment of mass disillusion and the crash. This last, it will now be sufficiently evident, never comes gently. It is always accompanied by a desperate and largely unsuccessful effort to get out. Inherent

La qualifica più comune di chi fa previsioni in campo economico consiste non già nel sapere, ma nel non sapere di non sapere. Il suo grande vantaggio è che tutte le previsioni, giusta o sbagliate che siano, vengono rapidamente dimenticate.

I can measure the motions of bodies," Sir Isaac Newton once observed, "but I cannot measure human folly." Nor could he do so as regards his own. He was to lose

And sometimes you need too much to know the facts, and so humbly and stupidly you stay.

he's imagining himself Justice incarnate, balancing the scales. He's forgotten that Justice incarnate is not only balancing the scales but also blindfolded.