Quotes About Wisdom

A fi cum spui, badica, dar cel ce spune multe stie putine.

For better or for worse, at this time science is still the most trustworthy mirror of reality, and we ignore it only at our peril.

The future," wrote C. K. Brightbill, "will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely.

The sacred books of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and the Veda are the best repositories of the ideas that mattered most to our ancestors, and to ignore them is an act of childish conceit. But it is equally naive to believe that whatever was written down in the past contains an absolute truth that lasts forever.

A large majority of our respondents were inspired by a tension in their domain that became obvious when looked at from the perspective of another domain. Even though they do not think of themselves as interdisciplinary, their best work bridges realms of ideas. Their histories tend to cast doubt on the wisdom of overspecialization, where bright young people are trained to become exclusive experts in one field and shun breadth like the plague.

What is the meaning of life?" turns out to be astonishingly simple. The meaning of life is meaning: whatever it is, wherever it comes from, a unified purpose is what gives meaning to life. The

Those who try to make life better for everyone without having learned to control their own lives first usually end up making things worse all around.

Jefferson's uncomfortable dictum "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" applies outside the fields of politics as well; it means that we must constantly reevaluate what we do, lest habits and past wisdom blind us to new possibilities.

accepting limitations is liberating.

As Francis Bacon remarked, quoting from a speech by the Stoic philosopher Seneca, "The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

In discarding a literal religious explanation, it becomes easy to discredit the hard-won wisdom often bundled up with it.

People who learn to enjoy their work, who do not waste their free time, end up feeling that their lives as a whole have become much more worthwhile. "The future," wrote C. K. Brightbill, "will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely.

means that we must constantly reevaluate what we do, lest habits and past wisdom blind us to new possibilities.

As Democritus said so simply many centuries ago: "Water can be both good and bad, useful and dangerous. To the danger, however, a remedy has been found: learning to swim." To swim in this case involves learning to distinguish the useful and the harmful forms of flow, and then making the most of the former while placing limits on the latter. The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs.

of the Zen masters might have been excellent in their own time—and might still be the best, if

Each biblical parable, for instance, tries to encode the hard-won experience of many individuals over unknown eons of time.

Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them," said Epictetus a long time ago. And the great emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote: "If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.

A leading philosopher in our study maintains that if a young person wants to learn philosophy these days, he or she would be better advised to become immersed in the domain directly and avoid the field altogether: "I'd tell him to read the great books of philosophy. And I would tell him not to do graduate study at any university. I think all philosophy departments are no good. They are all terrible.

it's a wise parent who allows her children to give up the things of childhood in their own time.

Hanefitai ir krikš?ionys, žydai ir magai tuš?iai jo ieškojo.Žem?je t?ra dvejopi žmon?s. Protingi, kurie neturi tik?jimo, ir tikintieji, kurie neturi proto

la soledad es el patrimonio de la edad adulta.

Pragnij, by twój puchar byÅ' peÅ'ny, chÅ'opcze, i nie zadowalaj siÄ™ wszystkim, co ci bÄ™dÄ… mówi?, lecz ufaj bardziej swoim bystrym oczom.

K dlouhému vÄ›ku se druží ?asto zkalení zraku a sklon považovat dávnÄ›jÅ¡í doby za lepÅ¡í dneÅ¡ních.

Remember that only stupidity is punished. Not lechery, nor greed, nor betrayal, nor apostasy, but stupidity alone. And truth is the worst stupidity, for only the feeble-minded thinks he has found truth.