Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

I am not young enough to know everything.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve – not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country – those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy – the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.

I don’t ascribe to myself any special competence in economic insight. I translate what I hear from highly intelligent people into political and philosophical propositions.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

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

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

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.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.

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

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

We are the most amazing creatures that this world has ever produced, but we seem to also have this herd mentality; we seem to be the most stupid, also.

I think a role model is a mentor – someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

Common sense is not so common.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

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.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.

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

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

There happen to be a lot of people around who spent an hour on the Internet and think they know a lot of physics, but it doesn’t work like that… There’s a reason there are graduate schools in these departments.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.