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

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.

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

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

He that won’t be counseled can’t be helped.

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

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.

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

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

Great teachers emanate out of knowledge, passion and compassion.

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

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

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

I’m not one of these guys who sits around saying, ‚Gee, I mean, the person had a strange childhood and that’s why he’s doing this horrible thing. Poor Jeffrey Dahmer. He’s just had a bad childhood and that’s why he’s eating people.‘ Wait a second! This person should be removed from the planet.

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

I’m married. My wife, Stella – a beautiful woman. She’s brought a lot of peace to my life, a lot of wisdom.

It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

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

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

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

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

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

No public man can be just a little crooked.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

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

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

Our best thoughts come from others.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.