Quotes About Insight

Samuel Noah Kramer

Samuel Noah Kramer

Archaeological discoveries made in Egypt and in the Near East in the past hundred years have opened our eyes to a spiritual and cultural heritage undreamed of by earlier generations.

We have to know who we are before we can know what our interests are.

What we need is not so much radical writers as we need radical readers!

There is so much you don't see. You walk around in a world with holes in it; you stumble into them; and get hurt.

Thinking in Babel-17 was like suddenly seeing the water at the bottom of a well that a moment ago you thought had only gone down a few feet

Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.

Forewarned is forearmed...

Your Excellence, it is not usually the obvious that is dangerous.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.

The experience to be gathered from books, Though often valuable, is but of the nature of learning Whereas the experience gained from actual life, Is of the nature of wisdom And a small store of the latter Is worth vastly more than a stock of the former.

It is not then how much a man may know that is of importance, but the end and purpose for which he knows it (p.299).

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.

My eyes make pictures, when they are shut.

"Ha! ha!" quoth he, "full plain I see,The Devil knows how to row."

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of his head.

The wise only possess ideas the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

There is one art of which man should be master, the art of reflection.

Silence does not always mark wisdom.