Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

There is no sin except stupidity.

One today is worth two tomorrows.

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, ‚He is not a lush.‘ That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, ‚Look!‘

Half a truth is often a great lie.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

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

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

I consider wisdom supernatural because it isn’t taught by men – it’s a gift from God.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

Money doesn’t talk, it swears.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

I think I’ve got wiser.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

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

Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Of two evils, choose neither.

Where there is love there is life.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.

On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.

Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

I would fain grow old learning many things.

If you wished to be loved, love.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

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

Algorithms diminish public safety in this country. They ask us to pretend that lengthy arrest records and violent crimes don’t matter. They ask police to scoop up the bad guys only for the courts to immediately release them. They turn us into a bad joke.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.