The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

‚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.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

I’m a genetic optimist.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.

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

It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

I want parents to teach that academic intelligence is essential, but so is financial intelligence.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge – the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

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

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.

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.

How young can you die of old age?

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

There is no sin except stupidity.

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

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

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

An empowered organisation is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organisational success.

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

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

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

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

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

To learn something but not to do is really not to learn. To know something but not to do is really not to know.

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.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

If you want to go somewhere, it is best to find someone who has already been there.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.