Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

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

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret… if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

History should be written as philosophy.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Sorry, I’m still a dialectical materialist.

You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. You’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people.

Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

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

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

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

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

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.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.