We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

When I did A Soldier’s Story, I was very young and green and thought I knew everything-now I know I know everything!

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ‚We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.‘ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

I think so many people live their whole life in fear and doubt and shame.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

Whatever is well said by another, is mine.

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.

I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

I’m strictly for Stevenson. I don’t dig the intellectual bit, but I’m telling you, man, he knows the most.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it’s just doing it.

The wisest have the most authority.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

The proactive approach to a mistake is to acknowledge it instantly, correct and learn from it.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

A word to the wise is infuriating.

Technology is huge; I wanted to learn about it. People might say that’s odd, but I think it’s odd if artists aren’t interested in the world around them. I’m always chasing that.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.

You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

When I’m really interested in something, I get superfocused on that. And I can spend hours upon hours not getting tired of reading about it and still be interested to learn more about it.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.