The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

Won’t it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

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

We boil at different degrees.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

You have your ideology and I have mine.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

I am not young enough to know everything.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

Right now, when we’re hearing so much disturbing and hateful rhetoric, it is so important to remember that our diversity has been – and will always be – our greatest source of strength and pride here in the United States.

I am odd-looking. I sometimes think I look like a funny Muppet.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

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

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country – I know, because I am one of them.

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

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

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

There isn’t anybody that looks like me without clothes on.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.