Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

We are wiser than we know.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

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

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‚I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.‘

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

Both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom: the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

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

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.