No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

I don’t see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.

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.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

I consider wisdom supernatural because it isn’t taught by men – it’s a gift from God.

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Start with God – the first step in learning is bowing down to God; only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning.

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

Experience is the teacher of all things.

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

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

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.

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

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

Confidence is always a good thing to have going into the weekend. Especially where it’s quite difficult to put the lap together.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

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

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… the truly wise person is colorblind.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

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.

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.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

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

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

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

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

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

Our best thoughts come from others.