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

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

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

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.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

We’re a diverse society, and I think the TV is doing a great job in showing that we’re all human beings, that we can all get along, that we can all be together, and I think that’s a marvelous thing.

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

The cautious seldom err.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Many sophisticated, intelligent people lack wisdom and common sense.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

When we value correct principles, we have truth – a knowledge of things as they are.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.

As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.

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.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

My mother used to tell me man gives the award, God gives the reward. I don’t need another plaque.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

It is not well to make great changes in old age.

The magic of America is that we’re a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

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

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

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

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

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

Youth is wasted on the young.

Our country does not believe in the concept of your God and my God. We believe that all gods are one. We have different ways of accepting Him. All ways lead to Him.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

All these walls that keep us from loving each other as one family or one race – racism, religion, where we grew up, whatever, class, socioeconomic – what makes us be so selfish and prideful, what keeps us from wanting to help the next man, what makes us be so focused on a personal legacy as opposed to the entire legacy of a race.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

The word ‚belief‘ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it – I don’t need to believe it.

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

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

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

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.