Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Beauty and folly are old companions.

There should be a point to movies. Sure, you’re giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

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.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

If you want to give up the admiration of thousands of men for the distain of one, go ahead, get married.

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

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

What is past is prologue.

To get a hold on boys you must be their friend.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Debates, I hate.

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

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

We cannot wish for that we know not.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‚always do what you are afraid to do.‘

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

If life gives you limes, make margaritas.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

I am not young enough to know everything.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

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

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.

Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.

Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.