Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

We can’t afford not to educate girls and give women the power and the access that they need.

Do not rebuke mockers, or they will hate you; rebuke the wise, and they will love you.

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

I was raised to be independent.

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

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

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

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

We must have government that builds stamina into communities and men. That makes men instead of mendicants.

It’s so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that’s what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

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.

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

I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren’t random.

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

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

Encouragement to all women is – let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to say, let’s see if we can’t prevent being ill by trying to offer a love of prevention before illness.

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.

A smart girl leaves before she is left.

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

The first step in a person’s salvation is knowledge of their sin.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent – just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.

We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment.

A fool is wise in his eyes.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

I learned a great many years ago that in a fight between husband and wife, a third party should never get between the woman’s skillet and the man’s ax-helve.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

I believe that of all the things I have done, exciting though many of them have been, there’s no doubt in my mind that the most worthwhile have been the establishing of schools and hospitals, and the rebuilding of monasteries in the mountains.

We cannot learn men from books.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

Older and wiser voices can help you find the right path, if you are only willing to listen.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

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

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

I am not afraid… I was born to do this.

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.