Study the past, if you would divine the future.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.

Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: ‚Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.‘ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.

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.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

Dissents speak to a future age.

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

There’s no point in making predictions. It’s not worth speculating because nothing is set in stone and things change all the time in football. Today there are opportunities that no one knows if they will come round again in the future.

I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

Many sophisticated, intelligent people lack wisdom and common sense.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

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.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

God created man, but I could do better.

The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.

I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.

If… many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.

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.

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

It’s a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn’t support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, ‚Well, yeah,‘ but you start to think, ‚Why not, though?‘ What makes one more valuable than another?

Traveling around the world and preaching for over 70 years did not give much time for reflection.

I give the children education.

Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.

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

If anyone thinks they’d rather be in a different part of history, they’re probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You’d probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.