There is no darkness but ignorance.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

‚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.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

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.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

Error is always more busy than truth.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

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

The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

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

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.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

The study and knowledge of the universe would somehow be lame and defective were no practical results to follow.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

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

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

What religion a man holds, to what race he belongs, these things are not important; the really important thing is this knowledge: the knowledge of God’s plan for men. For God has a plan, and that plan is evolution.

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

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

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.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

If you wished to be loved, love.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

When I did A Soldier’s Story, I was very young and green and thought I knew everything-now I know I know everything!

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

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

Education is important because it prepares you for life.

Philosophy is the highest music.

All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.

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.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.