Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

People do dismiss ambient music, don’t they? They call it ‚easy listening,‘ as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.

For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even… knowledge, was foolproof.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

I don’t want people to think of me as sexy.

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Our experience of any painting is always the latest line in a long conversation we’ve been having with painting. There’s no way of looking at art as though you hadn’t seen art before.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

The human race may be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

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.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

No one but a fool is always right.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

I’ve actually taken companies public, I’ve actually busted companies, I’ve actually gone broke.

The Old Testament God is a person with body parts and passions. The Church of England God has neither body, parts nor passions, and is therefore not a person.

To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.

Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

A celebrated people lose dignity upon a closer view.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

I always believe that there should come a time when your energy, speed, stamina should combine well with your brains.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

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

Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

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.

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

Error is always more busy than truth.

So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.

Funny thing is that the poorer people are, the more generous they seem to be.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

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.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

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

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

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