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

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we and all creation reflect.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

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.

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.

Cunning… is but the low mimic of wisdom.

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Nature is not human hearted.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

We as women, we have to understand that we know more, just even instinctively, than we think we do.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

We are a nation founded as a rebuke to tyranny. A nation of revolutionaries who refused sovereign reign from afar. Hear me – we’re a nation that says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A nation built on our differences, guided by the belief that we’re all created equal.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Experience teaches only the teachable.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

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.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

To start with, I love New York… It’s a little bit of the whole world… In New York, the whole world comes to you.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

We boil at different degrees.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

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

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.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science – that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

I know love is the answer.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

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

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

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.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

Libraries raised me.

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

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.