The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree’s fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down – bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.

The earth’s crust has not yet stopped heaving and plunging under our feet. Mountain ranges are still being thrust up on the horizon. Granites are still growing under the continental masses. Nor has the organic world ceased to produce new buds at the tips of its countless branches.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

He who hath many friends hath none.

Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

No driver is perfect.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.

All my life I’ve been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

I don’t consider myself to be that credulous.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

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

Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.

Information is not knowledge.

Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody may come along and say how stupid we were.

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

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

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

I feel like whatever you’ve done in your career, good or bad, it’s nothing but preparation for the big events to come.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

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

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ‚We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.‘ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals – and the most silly.

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

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.