Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

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.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

Real living is living for others.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

I often wake up in the night, and I like to have something to think about.

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

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

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.

It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Character is destiny.

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.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.

What’s coming will come and we’ll just have to meet it when it does.

They know enough who know how to learn.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

It’s hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

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.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

I don’t spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that’s how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.