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

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

America is known as a country that welcomes people to its shores. All kinds of people. The image of the Statue of Liberty with Emma Lazarus‘ famous poem. She lifts her lamp and welcomes people to the golden shore, where they will not experience prejudice because of the color of their skin, the religious faith that they follow.

Women are the engine driving the growth in California’s economy. Women make California’s economy unique.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don’t just want to possess it, it will find you.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.

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.

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.

I don’t watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.

The media need superheroes in science just as in every sphere of life, but there is really a continuous range of abilities with no clear dividing line.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

We don’t want two-tier people in America. Those who are legal but not citizens, and citizens.

The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and the true teacher is the learner.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

The wise use of your freedom to make your own decisions is crucial to your spiritual growth, now and for eternity.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

The cautious seldom err.

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.

A witty saying proves nothing.

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

There is only a finger’s difference between a wise man and a fool.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

All the learnin‘ my father paid for was a bit o‘ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

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

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

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 are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.