To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

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.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

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

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

Each day we understand better what the Indians say, and they us, so that very often we are intelligible to each other.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

I feel you’re in charge of your own situation.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

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

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification.

Only the really plain people know about love – the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

Seeing myself on the screen makes me cringe. I understand that I am that way – pouty.

It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

Certainly I’m not going to sit on the Internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I’m a sponge. I’ve always been a sponge.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

Error is always more busy than truth.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

I guess I have a little bit of an ego. I’m confidently cocky, you might say.

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.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

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.

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

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

Our Creator expects His children everywhere to educate themselves.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.

Me is a common sense man. That mean when me explain things, me explain it in a very simple way; that mean if I explain it to a baby, the baby will understand too, you know.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.