To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Science is but an image of the truth.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

We’ve got to dumb America up again.

The best leaders understand the motivations of their team members and know their people – their lives and their families. But a leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

I don’t think culture is something you can describe.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

I’m German in my mind, but from a Germany that doesn’t exist any more.

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

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

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Listen with the intent to understand, not the intent to reply.

I have a collective sense of suffering.

There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at all, or else we might mistake them for sinners, their actions are so like those of the ungodly.

Facts are stubborn things.

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.

I guess it’s flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‚Calculus for the Practical Man.‘ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

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 wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.

We’re always, by the way, in fundamental physics, always trying to investigate those things in which we don’t understand the conclusions. After we’ve checked them enough, we’re okay.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

Apart from life, a strong constitution, and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla.

Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

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

Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that – that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Proud 2 Pay – that’s something that distinguishes me, that’s something that defines me, and we’re going to keep that going.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.