Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

Forty to 60 I would say is your prime. That’s when you know the most, you’ve seen the most, you understand the most, and you still have some physical energy.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!

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

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

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

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

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

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.

You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

I believe that one key to success is to accept truth, no matter how it’s spoken.

One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.

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

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

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

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.

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

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.