Quotes on Intelligence and Wisdom
“I spent three days a week for ten years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of ten years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.”
Ray Bradbury, Intelligence/Wisdom
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
Ray Bradbury, Intelligence/Wisdom
“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Neil Gaiman, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
Neil Gaiman, Intelligence/Wisdom
“A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now, that's a question.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust
Neil Gaiman, Intelligence/Wisdom
20. "I Get It."
- John Wick in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)
John Wick, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Ignorance is bliss." – Cypher (The Matrix)
The Matrix, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I know kung-fu." – Neo (The Matrix)
The Matrix, Intelligence/Wisdom
“You smart! You loyal! You’re a genius!”
DJ Khaled, Intelligence/Wisdom
“It is characteristic of the unlearned that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.”
Calvin Coolidge, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
Calvin Coolidge, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Earthly minds, like mud-walls, resist the strongest batteries: And though perhaps sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, and keep out the enemy truth, that would captivate or disturb them. Tell a man passionately in love, that he is jilted; bring a score of witnesses of the falsehood of his mistress, it is ten to one but three kind words of hers shall invalidate all their testimonies.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom, Truth, Love
“The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself: and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object....
If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any degree proportionate; and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Power, Intelligence/Wisdom
“For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Goals, Truth, Intelligence/Wisdom
“It is therefore worthwhile, to search out the bounds between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things, whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent, and moderate our persuasions.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“For it will be very difficult to persuade men of sense that he who with dry eyes and satisfaction of mind can deliver his brother to the executioner to be burnt alive, does sincerely and heartily concern himself to save that brother from the flames of hell in the world to come.”
― John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
John Locke, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish which lies in the way to knowledge.”
John Locke, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again,–that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this DARK ROOM. For, methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: which, would they but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas
“This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read of every thing are thought to understand every thing too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.”
― John Locke, Locke's Conduct of the Understanding
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Few men think, yet all will have opinions. Hence men’s opinions are superficial and confused.”
― John Locke, The Empiricists: Locke: Concerning Human Understanding; Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge & 3 Dialogues; Hume: Concerning Human Understanding & Concerning Natural Religion
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.”
― Locke John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Volume II
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.”
― John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.”
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas
“The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas, Power
“I think reading is important in any form. I think a person who’s trying to learn to like reading should start off reading about a topic they are interested in, or a person they are interested in.”
Ice Cube, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Coming up in the streets, I had to learn how to read people early on. I’m a very analytical person. I observe a lot of the things that people don’t notice.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Anybody that’s borderline brilliant — they’re gonna suffer with depression. Cause you don’t see the world how other people see the world. You see it for what it is. You see it different.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I’m a bookworm. I know with my physical appearance that I don’t look like the typical reader. I’m in Barnes & Noble all the time, and you can look at people that look like they are supposed to be in there. I am in there, pants sagging, hat backwards.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom
“All things are obtained by Wisdom and Knowledge.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Bein’ logical gave me a reason to doubt.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Knowledge is provided but only to those who need to know.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Wise men change, fools stay the same.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom
“You can learn from a dummy. You can watch a dummy and learn what not to do. I’ve always been an observant individual.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I’m inspired by everything that goes on around me. I’m a sponge. I’m very analytical. I notice the things that most people don’t notice.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom
“You learn fast or you die young.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom, Death
“When you got wisdom and knowledge you supposed to spread the world with some Soulja love.”
Kevin Gates, Intelligence/Wisdom, Goals
“Anyone can memorize facts and figures. The real way to learn anything is to go out and experience it. Let your curiosity lead you.”
Will Ferrell, Intelligence/Wisdom
“We’re all waiting until we have deep knowledge, wisdom, and a sense of certainty before we venture forth. But we’ve got it backward—venturing forth is how we gain the knowledge.”
― Will Smith, Will
Will Smith, Intelligence/Wisdom
“you're the dumbest smart person i know, you're the dumbest dumb person i know.”
Will Smith, Intelligence/Wisdom
“There are so many people who have lived and died before you. You will never have a new problem; you're not going to ever have a new problem. Somebody wrote the answer down in a book somewhere.”
Will Smith, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I believe you need to be educated on what you want to do in life, but I don't believe you necessarily need collage to get there.”
Will Smith, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
“As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.”
Victor Hugo, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Taste is the common sense of genius.”
Victor Hugo, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.”
Victor Hugo, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I think, therefore I doubt.”
Victor Hugo, Intelligence/Wisdom
“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”
Victor Hugo, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.”
Victor Hugo, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928
Virginia Woolf, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”
Virginia Woolf, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts
Virginia Woolf, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The best wrestlers, whether its a Hulk Hogan or a Rey Mysterio, are the ones who have psychology and can understand this business.”
Hulk Hogan, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I’m real good with math, with numbers, like my dad was. I’m pretty much dialed in.”
Hulk Hogan, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The education of a man ( or woman ) is never completed until he dies.”
Robert E Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances.”
Robert E Lee, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.”
― William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.”
William James, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.”
William James, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.”
― William James, The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition
William James, Intelligence/Wisdom
“We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.”
William James, Intelligence/Wisdom
“To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds...”
William James, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”
William James, Intelligence/Wisdom
“To generalize is to be an idiot.”
William Blake, Intelligence/Wisdom
“There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.”
Andrew Carnegie, Intelligence/Wisdom
“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”
Andrew Carnegie, Intelligence/Wisdom
“We teach best what we most need to learn.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard Bach, Intelligence/Wisdom
“That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way is winning.”
― Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story
Richard Bach, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard Bach, Intelligence/Wisdom
“We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Bach, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Education is our first line of defense. In the conflict of principle and policy which divides the world (today), America’s hope, our hope, the hope of the world, is in education.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom
“What may have been sufficient yesterday is not sufficient today. New and terrible urgencies, new and terrible responsibilities, have been placed upon education.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Management
“To take full advantage of the increasing possibilities of nature, we must equip ourselves with increasing knowledge.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Nature
“No nation can maintain a position of leadership in the world of today unless it develops to the full its scientific and technological resources. No government adequately meets its responsibilities unless it generously and intelligently supports and encourages the work of science in the university, industry and in its own laboratories.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Government
“There is not really anything new, if you know what has gone before. What is new to people is what they do not know about their history or the history of the world.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
“I think this country is great on account of its small educational institutions, more than anything else. In institutions such as these the teachers and professors can give individual attention to each member of class.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
“There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
“For our day, and our children’s day, education must become a continuing adventure in human understanding, shared by all.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
“If peace is to endure, education must establish the moral unity of mankind.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
“The inherent dignity of man can only be exemplified through equality of opportunity for all. In striving toward that objective we look to the American school as a standard bearer.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Opportunities
“Without a strong educational system democracy is crippled. Knowledge is not only key to power. It is the citadel of human freedom.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society, Power, Freedom
“My CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The more knowledge you have, the more you’re free to rely on your instincts.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
“People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, ``Why has nobody discovered me?'' In school, didn't they see that I'm cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn't need? I got fuckin' lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie ``You throw my fuckin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous, '' and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin' genius or whatever I was, when I was a child. It was obvious to me. Why didn't they put me in art school? Why didn't they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin' cowboy like the rest of them? I was different.
I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me? A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint - express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin' dentist or a teacher.”
John Lennon, Intelligence/Wisdom
“When I was about twelve I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one, and if there isn't I don't care.”
John Lennon, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The more I see, the less I know for sure.”
John Lennon, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.”
- His teacher was the legendary philosopher Aristotle
Alexander the Great, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Listen – it makes you sound smarter.”
― Richard Branson, The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership
Richard Branson, Intelligence/Wisdom
“How slim the line is between genius and insanity and between determination and stubbornness.”
― Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
Richard Branson, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
“Did I tell you I have a reputation for brains?”
Amelia Earhart, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Experiment! Meet new people. That's better than any college education. You will find the unexpected everywhere as you go through life. By adventuring about, you become accustomed to the unexpected.”
Amelia Earhart, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
“Experiment! Meet new people. That’s better than any college education . . . By adventuring; about, you become accustomed to the unexpected. The unexpected then becomes what it really is . . . the inevitable.”
Amelia Earhart, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
“When all else fails, give up and go to the library.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63
Stephen King, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Literacy could be the ladder out of poverty.”
Morgan Freeman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Wealth
“Dont give a child a fish but show him how to fish.”
Mao Zedong, Intelligence/Wisdom
“All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.”
Mao Zedong, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution.”
― Mao Tse-tung, Quotations from Chairman
Mao Zedong, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Our attitude towards ourselves should be to be insatiable in learning and towards others to be tireless in teaching.”
Mao Zedong, Intelligence/Wisdom
“In waking a tiger, use a long stick.”
Mao Zedong, Intelligence/Wisdom
“When you point a finger at the moon to indicate the moon, instead of looking at the moon, the stupid ones look at your finger.”
Mao Zedong, Intelligence/Wisdom
“A country that does not know how to read and write is easy to deceive.”
Che Guevara, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The walls of the educational system must come down. Education should not be a privilege, so the children of those who have money can study.”
― Che Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People
Che Guevara, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.”
Che Guevara, Intelligence/Wisdom
“These books ain’t window dressing. I think Machiavelli’s the most sophisticated writer outside of Shakespeare. Way ahead of his time. Such a manipulative person. Everything he accomplished he did by kissin’ ass.”
- A piece of wisdom from literature as imparted by Mike Tyson.
Mike Tyson, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. One bit of advice: It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details, or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Well, I do think there’s a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning. What I mean by that is boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that. Otherwise, mentally, you wouldn’t be able to get through the day. But when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom, Science, Truth, Life
“So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.”
A Tale of Two Cities, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It’s better to know how to learn than learn how to know."
Dr Seuss, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells."
Dr Seuss, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go."
Dr Seuss, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Time teaches all things to him who lives forever but I have not the luxury of eternity.”
The Greatest Salesman in the World, Intelligence/Wisdom, Time
“Nature already has supplied me with knowledge and instinct far greater than any beast in the forest and the value of experience is overrated, usually by old men who nod wisely and speak stupidly.”
The Greatest Salesman in the World, Intelligence/Wisdom, Nature
“The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Life, Nature, Intelligence/Wisdom, Courage, Truth, Goals
“If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves. Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves. How can I dare to guess about humans in the far future? It is, I think, only a matter of natural selection. If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Goals, Power, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Or consider a story in the Jewish Talmud left out of the Book of Genesis. (It is in doubtful accord with the account of the apple, the Tree of Knowledge, the Fall, and the expulsion from Eden.) In The Garden, God tells Eve and Adam that He has intentionally left the Universe unfinished. It is the responsibility of humans, over countless generations, to participate with God in a "glorious" experiment - the "completing of the Creation." The burden of such a responsibility is heavy, especially on so weak and imperfect a species as ours, one with so unhappy a history. Nothing remotely like "completion" can be attempted without vastly more knowledge than we have today. But, perhaps, if our very existence is at stake, we will find ourselves able to rise to this supreme challenge.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Belief, Intelligence/Wisdom
“To mind being disliked by a woman you don’t desire and are not married to is yet another serious failure of common sense.”
Wendell Berry, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
Wendell Berry, Intelligence/Wisdom
“To define knowledge as merely empirical is to limit one's ability to know; it enfeebles one's ability to feel and think.”
Wendell Berry, Intelligence/Wisdom
“You don't need to be told some things. You can sometimes tell more by a man's silence and the set of his head than by what he says.”
Wendell Berry, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Again I resume the long lesson: how small a thing can be pleasing, how little in this hard world it takes to satisfy the mind and bring it to its rest.”
Wendell Berry, Intelligence/Wisdom
“When going back makes sense, you are going ahead.”
Wendell Berry, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.”
Margaret Mead, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
― Margaret Mead, And Keep Your Powder Dry
Margaret Mead, Intelligence/Wisdom
“We must turn all of our educational efforts to training our children for the choices which will confront them... The child who is to choose wisely must be healthy in mind and body. The children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
― Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation
Margaret Mead, Intelligence/Wisdom
“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly , our own.”
Margaret Mead, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw.”
Margaret Mead, Intelligence/Wisdom
“My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.”
Margaret Mead, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?”
Margaret Mead, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”
Joseph Campbell, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.”
Joseph Campbell, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.”
Marcus Garvey, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The pen is mightier than the sword, but the tongue is mightier than them both put together.”
Marcus Garvey, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.”
Marcus Garvey, Intelligence/Wisdom, Goals
“We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.”
Marcus Garvey, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
“Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.”
Marcus Garvey, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
“Having had the wrong education as a start in his racial career, the Negro has become his own greatest enemy. Most of the trouble I have had in advancing the cause of the race has come from Negroes. Booker Washington aptly described the race in one of his lectures by stating that we were like crabs in a barrel, that none would allow the other to climb over, but on any such attempt all would continue to pull back into the barrel the one crab that would make the effort to climb out. Yet, those of us with vision cannot desert the race, leaving it to suffer and die.”
Marcus Garvey, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.”
Marcus Garvey, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
“I believe in teaching, but I don’t believe in going to school.”
Robert Frost, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”
Robert Frost, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
Robert Frost, Intelligence/Wisdom
“There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.”
Robert Frost, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting.”
Robert Frost, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”
Robert Frost, Intelligence/Wisdom, Work
"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about."
Wayne Dyer, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil."
Thomas Edison, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around."
Thomas Edison, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
Thomas Edison, Intelligence/Wisdom
Never get discouraged if you fail. Learn from it. Keep trying.
Thomas Edison, Intelligence/Wisdom, Goals
"Not everything of value in life comes from books- experience the world."
Thomas Edison, Intelligence/Wisdom
Never stop learning. Read the entire panorama of literature.
Thomas Edison, Intelligence/Wisdom
Learn with both your head and hands.
Thomas Edison, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I don’t know. If I knew, I’d know, ya know?”
Theo Von, Intelligence/Wisdom
“You think the wind is trying to tell us something, but we don’t know how to hear it no more?”
Theo Von, Nature, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
Will Rogers, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Common sense ain't common.”
Will Rogers, Intelligence/Wisdom
“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.”
Will Rogers, Intelligence/Wisdom
“You know, everybody's ignorant, just on different subjects.”
Will Rogers, Intelligence/Wisdom
“If stupidity got us in this mess, how come it can't get us out.”
Will Rogers, Intelligence/Wisdom
“A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.”
Will Rogers, Intelligence/Wisdom
“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
Will Rogers, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence.”
Frida Kahlo, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme happiness.”
David Hume, Happiness, Intelligence/Wisdom
“All the philosophy… in the world, and all the religion, which is nothing but a species of philosophy, will never be able to carry us beyond the usual course of experience.”
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom, Belief, Life
“To consider the matter aright, reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities.”
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'.”
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.”
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“But such is the nature of the human mind, that it always lays hold on every mind that approaches it.”
― ‘Essays, Moral, Political, And Literary’.
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.”
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian.”
― ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’.
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?”
― ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’.
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.”
― ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’.
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom, Goals
“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
― ‘A Treatise Of Human Nature’.
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom, Belief
“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
― ‘A Treatise Of Human Nature’.
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom, Belief
“The identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one, established by the mind, not a peculiar nature belonging to what we’re talking about.”
― ‘A Treatise Of Human Nature’.
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.”
― ‘A Treatise Of Human Nature’.
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason.”
― ‘A Treatise Of Human Nature’.
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”
― ‘A Treatise Of Human Nature’.
David Hume, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Money is 80% behavior, 20% head knowledge. It’s what you do, not what you know.”
Dave Ramsey, Finance, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I believe that through knowledge and discipline, financial peace is possible for all of us.”
Dave Ramsey, Intelligence/Wisdom, Finance
"He ate and drank the precious words;
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor
Nor that his frame was dust."
Poem – He ate and drank the precious words
Emily Dickinson, Intelligence/Wisdom, Wealth
"The brain is wider than the sky"
Poem – The brain is wider than the sky
Emily Dickinson, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Timeless is the creature who is wise. And timeless is the prisoner in disguise.”
Stevie Nicks, Time, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
“And I knew then, as I know now, that I still have so much to do.”
Stevie Nicks, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”
Milton Friedman, Government, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I am told by people all the time that they simply do not have time to read and listen to all the material they have purchased or subscribed to. But time is democratic and just. Everyone has the same amount.
When I choose to read with my mid morning coffee break and you choose to blather about trivia with friends, when I choose to study for an hour sitting on my backyard deck at day's end but you choose to watch a TIVO'd American Idol episode, we reveal much.
When someone says he does not have the time to apply himself to acquiring the know-how required to create sufficient value for his stated desires, he is a farmer surrounded by ripe fruit and vegetables, whole grains, and a herd of cattle on his own property who dies of starvation, unable to organize his time and discipline himself to eat.”
Dan Kennedy, Life, Time, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Ultimately, as always, the way the majority thinks about money is wrong. Thinking that virtue or talent or superior product quality or service entitles you to success is fantastical and foolish.”
Dan Kennedy, Intelligence/Wisdom, Wealth, Business, Success
“I know the mind, like the parachute, is most valuable open.”
Dan Kennedy, Intelligence/Wisdom
“So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.”
Jordan Peterson, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“If you can’t understand why someone is doing something, look at the consequences of their actions, whatever they might be, and then infer the motivations from their consequences.”
Jordan Peterson, Intelligence/Wisdom
“If you’re going to be successful you need to be smart, conscientious, and tough.”
Jordan Peterson, Intelligence/Wisdom, Success, Strength
“Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.”
Jordan Peterson, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power, Life
“In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.”
Jordan Peterson, Intelligence/Wisdom
“What in the world would we do without our libraries?”
Katharine Hepburn, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I do have reasons for hope: our clever brains, the resilience of nature, the indomitable human spirit, and above all, the commitment of young people when they’re empowered to take action.”
Jane Goodall, Hope, Intelligence/Wisdom, Goals
“Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?”
Jane Goodall, Nature, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Of course, a great deal of our onslaught on Mother Nature is not really lack of intelligence but a lack of compassion for future generations and the health of the planet: sheer selfish greed for short-term benefits to increase the wealth and power of individuals, corporations and governments. The rest is due to thoughtlessness, lack of education, and poverty. In other words, there seems to be a disconnect between our clever brain and our compassionate heart. True wisdom requires both thinking with our head and understanding with our heart.”
- From The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times
Jane Goodall, Intelligence/Wisdom, Kindness, Nature, Society, Business, Government
“Like our intellect, social media in itself is neither good nor bad — it is the use to which we put it that counts.”
Jane Goodall, Intelligence/Wisdom, Technology
“Children — and adults — who have a growth mindset are much more successful than those who have a fixed mindset about themselves and the world.”
Jane Goodall, Intelligence/Wisdom
“What you have to do is to get into the heart. And how do you get into the heart? With stories.”
- At the World Economic Forum
Jane Goodall, Intelligence/Wisdom
“There seems to be a disconnect between our clever brain and our compassionate heart.”
- From The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times
Jane Goodall, Intelligence/Wisdom, Kindness
“What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.”
Jane Goodall, Intelligence/Wisdom
“What cruel mistakes are sometimes made by benevolent men and women in matters of business about which they can know nothing and think they know a great deal.”
Florence Nightingale, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Ever since I was a little girl and could barely talk, the word 'why' has lived and grown along with me. It's a well-known fact that children ask questions about anything and everything, since almost everything is new to them. That is especially true of me, and not just as a child. Even when I was older, I couldn't stop asking questions.
I have to admit that it can be annoying sometimes, but I comfort myself with the thought that "You won't know until you ask," though by now I've asked so much that they ought to have made me a professor.
When I got older, I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered. As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions. And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can't or shouldn't ask in public, or questions which you can't put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word 'why' not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good.”
Anne Frank, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I have one outstanding trait in my character, which must strike anyone who knows me for any length of time, and that is my knowledge of myself. I can watch myself and my actions, just like an outsider. The Anne of every day I can face entirely without prejudice, without making excuses for her, and watch what's good and what's bad about her. This 'self-consciousness' haunts me, and every time I open my mouth I know as soon as I've spoken whether 'that ought to have been different' or 'that was right as it was.' There are so many things about myself that I condemn; I couldn't begin to name them all. I understand more and more how true Daddy's words were when he said: 'All children must look after their own upbringing.' Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”
Anne Frank, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Although I'm only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child, I feel quite independent of anyone.”
Anne Frank, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
“College isn't the place to go for ideas.”
Helen Keller, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas
“I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another [with sight and hearing]. Its people, scenery, manners, joys, and tragedies should be living tangible interpreters of the real world. The lecture halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiment of wisdom... But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience became beautifully less and "faded into the light of common day." Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going to college. The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures – solitude, books and imagination – outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.”
Helen Keller, Intelligence/Wisdom
“I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”
Helen Keller, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Knowledge is love and light and vision.”
Helen Keller, Love, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.”
Helen Keller, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The highest result of education is tolerance."
Helen Keller, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom."
Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy), Intelligence/Wisdom
"Everything I know, I know because of love."
Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy), Intelligence/Wisdom, Love
"Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid."
Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy), Courage, Intelligence/Wisdom
"One can best prepare themselves for the economic future by investing in your own education. If you study hard and learn at a young age, you will be in the best circumstances to secure your future."
Warren Buffet, Finance, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it."
Warren Buffet, Finance, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business."
Warren Buffet, Business, Intelligence/Wisdom
"What we learn from history is that people don't learn from history."
Warren Buffet, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
"If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians."
Warren Buffet, Finance, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing."
Warren Buffet, Finance, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing."
Warren Buffet, Finance, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There is nothing wrong with a 'know nothing' investor who realizes it. The problem is when you are a 'know nothing' investor but you think you know something."
Warren Buffet, Finance, Intelligence/Wisdom
"What counts for most people in investing vs saving is not how much they know, but rather how realistically they define what they don't know."
Warren Buffet, Finance, Intelligence/Wisdom
"You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ."
Warren Buffet, Finance, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective."
Warren Buffet, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange."
Walt Whitman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Art
"Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?"
Walt Whitman, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Simplicity is the glory of expression."
Walt Whitman, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I think being nice is more important than being clever."
Ricky Gervais, Kindness, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Stupidity without malice isn’t horrible; some people can’t help it."
Ricky Gervais, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Why buy a book when you can join a library?"
Ricky Gervais, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Honor is a gift a man gives himself. You can be as good as anyone that ever lived. If you can read, you can learn everything that anyone ever learned. But you’ve got to want it."
Ricky Gervais, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Telling someone with depression to pull themselves together is about as useful as telling someone with cancer to just stop having cancer."
Ricky Gervais, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others. The same applies when you are stupid."
Ricky Gervais, Death, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Beauty is a sign of intelligence."
Andy Warhol, Art, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Mama always said you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes.”– Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is.”– Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump, Intelligence/Wisdom, Love
"Mama always had a way of explaining things so I could understand them." -Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Stupid is as stupid does." - Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves—along with the renewed courage to try them out."
Audre Lorde, Ideas, Freedom, Intelligence/Wisdom, Sex
"For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered."
Audre Lorde, Sex, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power
"Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge."
Audre Lorde, Anger and Fighting, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few."
bell hooks, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers without challenging them to be educated for critical consciousness."
bell hooks, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Yesterday I was thinking about the whole idea of genius and creative people, and the notion that if you create some magical art, somehow that exempts you from having to pay attention to the small things."
bell hooks, Intelligence/Wisdom, Arrogance
"I really like to stay in my nest and not move. I travel in my mind, and that's a rigorous state of journeying for me."
bell hooks, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There’s no such thing as an appropriate joke. That’s why it’s called a joke."
Michael Scott, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."
James Baldwin, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power, Justice
"It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind."
James Baldwin, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
"The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated."
James Baldwin, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive."
James Baldwin, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world."
James Baldwin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom
"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
"When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom
"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life, Freedom
"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom, Goals
"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom, Wealth, Society
"And how many hours a day did you do lessons?” said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
“Ten hours the first day,” said the Mock Turtle: “nine the next, and so on.”
“What a curious plan!” exclaimed Alice.
“That’s the reason they’re called lessons,” the Gryphon remarked: “because they lessen from day to day."
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"When we were little,” the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then,” we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle—we used to call him Tortoise—”
“Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn’t one?” asked Alice.
“We called him Tortoise because he taught us,” said the Mock Turtle angrily. “Really you are very dull!"
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. “I don’t see any wine,” she remarked.
“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.
“Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,” said Alice angrily.
“It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited,” said the March Hare."
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone: “so I ca’n’t take more.”
“You mean you ca’n’t take less,” said the Hatter: “It’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Really, now you ask me,” said Alice, very much confused, “I don’t think—”
“Then you shouldn’t talk,” said the Hatter."
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English)."
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It was all very well to say “Drink me,” but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. “No, I’ll look first,” she said, “and see whether it’s marked ‘poison’ or not."
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I can’t know everything."
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The proper order of things is often a mystery to me."
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Well, some go this way, and some go that way. But as for me, myself, personally, I prefer the short-cut."
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The best way to explain it is to do it."
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I’m older than you, and must know better."
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Speak English!” said the Eaglet. “I don’t know the meaning of half those long words, and, what’s more, I don’t believe you do either!"
Alice in Wonderland, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We was the fools, and the was the wise men; but we wasn't fools enough to go down the high road in the broad daylight."
Harriet Tubman, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Some know the value of education by having it. I know it's value by not having it."
Frederick Douglass, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. in moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm."
Frederick Douglass, Freedom, Happiness, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave."
Frederick Douglass, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."
Frederick Douglass, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
"The school must permit the free, natural manifestations of the child if in the school scientific pedagogy is to be born. This is the essential reform."
Maria Montessori, Freedom, Intelligence/Wisdom
"For a man is not only a biological but a social product, and the social environment of individuals in the process of education, is the home. Scientific pedagogy will seek in vain to better the new generation if it does not succeed in influencing also the environment within which this new generation grows!"
Maria Montessori, Society, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The true basis of the imagination is reality."
Maria Montessori, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom, Truth
"If the child shows through its conversation that the educational work of the school is being undermined by the attitude taken in his home, he will be sent back to his parents, to teach them thus how to take advantage of their good opportunities."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Even so those who teach little children too often have the idea that they are educating babies and seek to place themselves on the child's level by approaching him with games, and often with foolish stories. Instead of all this, we must know how to call to the man which lies dormant within the soul of the child."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"What is generally known as discipline in traditional schools is not activity, but immobility and silence. It is not discipline, but something that festers inside a child, arousing his rebellious feelings."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The best instruction is that which uses the least words sufficient for the task."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Great tact and delicacy is necessary for the care of the mind of a child from three to six years, and an adult can have very little of it."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is true that we cannot make a genius. We can only give to teach child the chance to fulfil his potential possibilities."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself--that is the first duty of the educator."
Maria Montessori, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The things he sees are not just remembered; they form a part of his soul."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Preventing war is the work of politicians, establishing peace is the work of educationists."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom, Government, Anger and Fighting
"Scientific observation then has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom, Government, Anger and Fighting
"We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life."
Maria Montessori, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create."
Maria Montessori, Intelligence/Wisdom, Courage, Strength
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."
George Orwell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?"
George Orwell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing."
George Orwell, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power
"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."
George Orwell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."
George Orwell, Society, Intelligence/Wisdom
"When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon."
Thomas Paine, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it."
Thomas Paine, Intelligence/Wisdom
"From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom."
Thomas Paine, Intelligence/Wisdom, Mistakes
"One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests."
Thomas Paine, Intelligence/Wisdom, Belief
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."
Thomas Paine, Intelligence/Wisdom, Time
"The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark."
Thomas Paine, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value."
Stephen Hawking, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If you remember every word in this book, your memory will have recorded about two million pieces of information: the order in your brain will have increased by about two million units. However, while you have been reading the book, you will have converted at least a thousand calories of ordered energy, in the form of food, into disordered energy, in the form of heat that you lose to the air around you by convection and sweat. This will increase the disorder of the universe by about twenty million million million million units - or about ten million million million times the increase in order in your brain - and that's if you remember everything in this book."
Stephen Hawking, Science, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I like physics, but I love cartoons."
Stephen Hawking, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge."
Stephen Hawking, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in."
Stephen Hawking, Intelligence/Wisdom, Goals
"A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At teh end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever, " said the old lady. "But it turtles all the way down!"
Stephen Hawking, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people."
Stephen Hawking, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change."
Stephen Hawking, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Quiet people have the loudest minds."
Stephen Hawking, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."
Thomas Sowell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think."
Thomas Sowell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Intellect is not wisdom."
Thomas Sowell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
Thomas Sowell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is not in the shallow physical imitation of men that women will assert first their equality and later their superiority, but in the awakening of the intellect of women."
Tesla, Sex, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If he [Thomas Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. … Just a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor."
Tesla, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I had a veritable mania for finishing whatever I began, which often got me into difficulties. On one occasion I started to read the works of Voltaire when I learned, to my dismay, that there were close on one hundred large volumes in small print which that monster had written while drinking seventy-two cups of black coffee per diem. It had to be done, but when I laid aside the last book I was very glad, and said, “Never more!"
Tesla, Intelligence/Wisdom
"His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle."
Tesla, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education. The twenty-first century will reverse this order. It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the field of battle. The discovery of a new scientific truth will be more important than the squabbles of diplomats. Even the newspapers of our own day are beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of fresh philosophical concepts as news. The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere 'stick' in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.
Progress along such lines will be impossible while nations persist in the savage practice of killing each other off. I inherited from my father, an erudite man who labored hard for peace, an ineradicable hatred of war."
Tesla, Anger and Fighting, Intelligence/Wisdom, Science
"But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile."
Tesla, Intelligence/Wisdom, Truth
"If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have the key to the universe."
Tesla, Intelligence/Wisdom
"My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists."
Tesla, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
Tesla, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Of all things, I liked books best."
Tesla, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you."
Steve Jobs, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"Creativity is just connecting things."
Steve Jobs, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Life goes on and you learn from it."
Steve Jobs, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Talk low, Talk slow, and Don't say too much."
John Wayne, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is only through examining history that you become aware of where you stand within the continuum of change."
John Lewis, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
John Lewis, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We need to make books available to children so they can easily learn about the world, and they can follow their imaginations. Children who read maintain their sense of wonder and ask questions—necessary questions—that make us examine why things are the way they are."
John Lewis, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I loved going to the library. It was the first time I ever saw Black newspapers and magazines like JET, Ebony, the Baltimore Afro-American, or the Chicago Defender. And I’ll never forget my librarian."
John Lewis, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance."
John Muir, Life, Intelligence/Wisdom, Time
"Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it."
John Muir, Nature, Intelligence/Wisdom
"What is powerful is when what you say is just the tip of the iceberg of what you know."
Jim Rohn, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it."
Jim Rohn, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It isn’t what the book costs. It’s what it will cost you if you don’t read it."
Jim Rohn, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library."
Jim Rohn, Intelligence/Wisdom, Success
"Some people claim that it is okay to read trashy novels because sometimes you can find something valuable in them. You can also find a crust of bread in a garbage can, if you search long enough, but there is a better way."
Jim Rohn, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Motivation alone is not enough.if you have an idiot and you motivate him,now you have a motivated idiot."
Jim Rohn, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The difference between where you are today and where you'll be five years from now will be found in the quality of books you've read."
Jim Rohn, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"Those who will not read are no better off than those who cannot read."
Jim Rohn, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book."
Jim Rohn, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Don't let your learning lead to knowledge. Let your learning lead to action."
Jim Rohn, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune."
Jim Rohn, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you."
Zig Ziglar, Intelligence/Wisdom
"certain hallmarks of her legal writing and thought—her care in choosing words, her wariness of politically motivated prosecution, her concern that shortcuts in the name of efficiency often reduce effectiveness in the long run, and her unswerving commitment to individual rights and the presumption of innocence—shone through even in that first letter to her college newspaper."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A sense of humor is helpful for those who would advance social change."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"According to Ruth, Nabokov changed the way she read and wrote: “He used words to paint pictures. Even today, when I read, I notice with pleasure when an author has chosen a particular word, a particular place, for the picture it will convey to the reader."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Never underestimate the power of a girl with a book."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Power, Sex, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life, Goals
"Rabbi Alfred Bettleheim once said: “Prejudice saves us a painful trouble, the trouble of thinking."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The giving of love is an education in itself."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Love, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"All of life is a constant education."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life, Love
"With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Strength, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart."
Eleanor Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom, Kindness
"All things truly wicked start from innocence."
Ernest Hemingway, Intelligence/Wisdom
"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."
Ernest Hemingway, Intelligence/Wisdom
"No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful."
Ernest Hemingway, Intelligence/Wisdom
"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."
Ernest Hemingway, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
Ernest Hemingway, Happiness, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special."
Nelson Mandela, Intelligence/Wisdom, Kindness
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
Nelson Mandela, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs."
Nelson Mandela, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Do not try to seem wise to others."
Epictetus, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak."
Epictetus, Intelligence/Wisdom
"First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak."
Epictetus, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Only the educated are free."
Epictetus, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows."
Epictetus, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid."
Epictetus, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents."
Epictetus, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There is no genius without a touch of madness."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We learn not in the school, but in life."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Timendi causa est nescire - Ignorance is the cause of fear."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom
"No man was ever wise by chance."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced."
Seneca, Intelligence/Wisdom
"True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not."
Seneca, Happiness, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A house that has a library in it has a soul."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom, Love
"Education is teaching our children to desire the right things."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Everything you do, if not in a relaxed state will be done at a lesser level than you are proficient. Thus the tensed expert marksman will aim at a level less than his/her student."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"All knowledge leads to self-knowledge."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Showing off is the fool's idea of glory."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Knowledge will give you power, but character respect."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power, Life
"Now I see that I will never find the light Unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel, Consuming myself."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Self-knowledge involves relationship. To know oneself is to study one self in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self evaluation and self revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself - to be is to be related."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you&pos;ll never get it done."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Freedom, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom, Anger and Fighting
"It isn't sufficient just to want - you've got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Freedom, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Freedom, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience."
George Washington, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We must consult our means rather than our wishes."
George Washington, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I conceive a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built."
George Washington, Intelligence/Wisdom
"To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country."
George Washington, Goals, Art, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for ‘tis better to be alone than in bad company."
George Washington, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Nothing can illustrate these observations more forcibly, than a recollection of the happy conjuncture of times and circumstances, under which our Republic assumed its rank among the Nations; The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period, the researches of the human mind, after social happiness, have been carried to a great extent, the Treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labours of Philosophers, Sages and Legislatures, through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the Establishment of our forms of Government; the free cultivation of Letters, the unbounded extension of Commerce, the progressive refinement of Manners, the growing liberality of sentiment... have had a meliorating influence on mankind and increased the blessings of Society. At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a Nation, and if their Citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own."
George Washington, Intelligence/Wisdom, Happiness, Government, Society
"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."
George Washington, Intelligence/Wisdom, Happiness
"A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?"
George Washington, Intelligence/Wisdom, Government, Freedom
"It is better to be alone than in bad company."
George Washington, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one."
George Washington, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led."
Thomas Jefferson, Intelligence/Wisdom, Truth
"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it."
Thomas Jefferson, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more."
Thomas Jefferson, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."
Thomas Jefferson, Intelligence/Wisdom
"On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock."
Thomas Jefferson, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
Thomas Jefferson, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom."
Thomas Jefferson, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I cannot live without books."
Thomas Jefferson, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The selfish mind is the distracted mind and the distracted mind is the easily oppressed mind."
Selena Gomez, Intelligence/Wisdom
"You don’t luck into integrity. You work at it."
Betty White, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I just laugh. Have I got them fooled."
Betty White, Intelligence/Wisdom
"You can always tell about somebody by the way they put their hands on an animal."
Betty White, Intelligence/Wisdom
"My philosophy for staying young is [to] act bubbly every day, drink bubbly every birthday!"
Betty White, Intelligence/Wisdom
"My mother always used to say, 'The older you get, the better you get. Unless you’re a banana."
Betty White, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A child miseducated is a child lost."
JFK- John F. Kennedy, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I'm an idealist without illusions."
JFK- John F. Kennedy, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain."
JFK- John F. Kennedy, Freedom, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty."
JFK- John F. Kennedy, Intelligence/Wisdom, Government
"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."
JFK- John F. Kennedy, Management, Intelligence/Wisdom
"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
Ronald Reagan, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth."
Teddy Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience."
Teddy Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad."
Teddy Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I am a part of everything that I have read."
Teddy Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing."
Teddy Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month."
Teddy Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right."
Teddy Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom
"To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society."
Teddy Roosevelt, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
"A quality education has the power to transform societies in a single generation, provide children with the protection they need from the hazards of poverty, labor exploitation and disease, and given them the knowledge, skills, and confidence to reach their full potential."
Audrey Hepburn, Intelligence/Wisdom
"You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him."
Audrey Hepburn, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Sensation tell us a thing is. Thinking tell us what it is this thing is. Feeling tells us what this thing is to us."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom, Love
"Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not."
Carl Jung, Mistakes, Truth, Intelligence/Wisdom
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."
Carl Jung, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I only know that I know nothing."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"My friend...care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"understanding a question is half an answer."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom, Wealth
"I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort.
From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am.
We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know."
Socrates, Arrogance Intelligence/Wisdom
"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for."
Socrates, Time, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Let him who would move the world first move himself."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Know thyself."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"To find yourself, think for yourself."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Wonder is the beginning of wisdom."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
Socrates, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Wise men speak when they have something to say, fools speak because they have to say something."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Wit is educated insolence."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The more you know, the more you know you don't know."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom, Government
"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society
"Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."
Aristotle, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty."
Mark Twain, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It liberates the vandal to travel—you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction."
Mark Twain, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is noble to teach oneself, but still nobler to teach others—and less trouble."
Mark Twain, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad."
Mark Twain, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect)."
Mark Twain, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
Mark Twain, Intelligence/Wisdom
"What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one’s self-approval."
Mark Twain, Love, Forgive, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read."
Mark Twain, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Laughter without a tinge of philosophy is but a sneeze of humor. Genuine humor is replete with wisdom."
Mark Twain, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Classic'–a book which people praise and don’t read."
Mark Twain, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I think I'm a mixture of simplicity and complexes, but I'm beginning to understand myself now."
Marilyn Monroe, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A wise girl knows her limits, a smart girl knows that she has none."
Marilyn Monroe, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A woman knows by intuition, or instinct, what is best for herself."
Marilyn Monroe, Intelligence/Wisdom
"What’s wrong with knowing what you know now and not knowing what you don’t know until later?"
Winnie the Pooh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If it’s not Here, that means it’s out There."
Winnie the Pooh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it."
Winnie the Pooh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering."
Winnie the Pooh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."
Winnie the Pooh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think."
Winnie the Pooh, Courage, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I am not lost, for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost."
Winnie the Pooh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I wasn’t going to eat it, I was just going to taste it."
Winnie the Pooh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Think it over, think it under."
Winnie the Pooh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Sit, be still, and listen, because you're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof."
Rumi, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside."
Rumi, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment."
Rumi, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."
Rumi, Intelligence/Wisdom
"You can fool some people some times but you cant fool all the people all the time."
Bob Marley, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Don't Gain The World & Lose Your Soul, Wisdom Is Better Than Silver Or Gold."
Bob Marley, Intelligence/Wisdom
"So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me and reminded me that there are good things in the world."
Van Gogh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning."
Van Gogh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away."
Van Gogh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning."
Van Gogh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful."
Van Gogh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream."
Van Gogh, Intelligence/Wisdom
"As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course."
Martin Luther King Jr., Intelligence/Wisdom
"Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education."
Martin Luther King Jr., Intelligence/Wisdom
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Martin Luther King Jr., Intelligence/Wisdom
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry."
Abraham Lincoln, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
Abraham Lincoln, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."
Abraham Lincoln, Intelligence/Wisdom
"All I have learned, I learned from books."
Abraham Lincoln, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves."
Abraham Lincoln, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
Abraham Lincoln, Intelligence/Wisdom
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
Abraham Lincoln, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."
Abraham Lincoln, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all."
Abraham Lincoln, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Speak only if it improves upon the silence."
Gandhi, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning."
Gandhi, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes."
Gandhi, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet."
Gandhi, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour."
Marcus Aurelius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The things you think about determine the quality of your mind."
Marcus Aurelius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone."
Marcus Aurelius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Marcus Aurelius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."
Marcus Aurelius, Intelligence/Wisdom, Truth
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A joke is a very serious thing."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A good speech should be like a woman's skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Personally, I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip."
Winston Churchill, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know."
Bertrand Russell, Science, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge."
Bertrand Russell, Life, Love, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power
"When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
Bertrand Russell, Belief, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The Astronomer:
An Astronomer used to go out at night to observe the stars. One evening, as he wandered through the suburbs with his whole attention fixed on the sky, he fell accidentally into a deep well. While he lamented and bewailed his sores and bruises, and cried loudly for help, a neighbor ran to the well, and learning what had happened said: "Hark ye, old fellow, why, in striving to pry into what is in heaven, do you not manage to see what is on earth?”
Aesop, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own."
Aesop, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow."
Aesop, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Necessity is the mother of invention."
Aesop, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main…and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life."
Walt Disney, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Fantasy, if it’s really convincing, can’t become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time."
Walt Disney, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you’re young. I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you."
Walt Disney, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination."
Walt Disney, Intelligence/Wisdom
"That’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again."
Walt Disney, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I resent the limitations of my own imagination."
Walt Disney, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children."
Walt Disney, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."
Walt Disney, Intelligence/Wisdom
"When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do."
Walt Disney, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Prejudices are what fools use for reason."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The secret of being a bore is to tell everything."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Common sense is not so common."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers."
Voltaire, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Growing up in Burbank, there wasn’t much of a museum culture. I never visited one until I was a teenager (unless you count the Hollywood Wax Museum). I occupied my time going to see monster movies, watching tv, drawing, and playing in the local cemetery. Later, when I did start frequenting museums, I was struck by how similar the vibe was to the cemetery. Not in a morbid way, but both have a quiet, introspective, yet electrifying atmosphere. Excitement, mystery, discovery, life, and death all in one place."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I had seen other stop-motion animated features, and they were either not engaging or they're just too bizarre. There was one I liked when I was a kid called Mad Monster Party. People thought Nightmare was the first stop-motion animated monster musical, but that was."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Things that I grew up with stay with me. You start a certain way, and then you spend your whole life trying to find a certain simplicity that you had. It's less about staying in childhood than keeping a certain spirit of seeing things in a different way."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not necessarily in that order."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Most people say about graveyards: "Oh, it's just a bunch of dead people. It's creepy." But for me, there's an energy to it that it not creepy, or dark. It has a positive sense to it."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I wouldn't know a good script if it bit me in the face."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I was never interested in what everybody else was interested in. I was very interiorized. I always felt kind of sad."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I have a problem when people say something's real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective. I've always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I am the shadow on the moon at night/Filling your dreams to the brim with fright."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
Mad Matter: "Have I gone mad?" Alice: "I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"One person's craziness is another person's reality."
Tim Burton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work."
Peter Drucker, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence."
Peter Drucker, Management, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge."
Peter Drucker, Management, Intelligence/Wisdom
"When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course."
Peter Drucker, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes."
Peter Drucker, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit."
Oscar Wilde, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them."
Oscar Wilde, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
Oscar Wilde, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
Oscar Wilde, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
Oscar Wilde, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
Oscar Wilde, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
Oscar Wilde, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."
Oscar Wilde, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
Oscar Wilde, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The best cure for the body is a quiet mind."
Napoleon Bonaparte, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Great men are meteors designed to burn so that earth may be lighted."
Napoleon Bonaparte, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A picture is worth a thousand words."
Napoleon Bonaparte, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind."
Napoleon Bonaparte, Intelligence/Wisdom
"You don't reason with intellectuals. You shoot them."
Napoleon Bonaparte, Intelligence/Wisdom, Anger and Fighting
"Imagination governs the world."
Napoleon Bonaparte, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world."
Napoleon Bonaparte, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I am still learning."
Michelangelo, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is necessary to keep one's compass in one's eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges."
Michelangelo, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it."
Michelangelo, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands."
Michelangelo, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Why do you send fools to judge my work?"
Michelangelo, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Your gifts lie in the place where your values, passions and strengths meet. Discovering that place is the first step toward sculpting your masterpiece, Your Life."
Michelangelo, Life
"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
Michelangelo, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The best artist has that thought alone which is contained within the marble shell; only the sculptor's hand can break the spell to free the figures."
Michelangelo, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Genius is eternal patience."
Michelangelo, Intelligence/Wisdom, Patience
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."
Karl Marx, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Experience is the teacher of all things."
Julius Caesar, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent."
Isaac Newton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess."
Isaac Newton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."
Isaac Newton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I know not how I seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with while the vast ocean of undiscovered truth lay before me."
Isaac Newton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean."
Isaac Newton, Intelligence/Wisdom
"There are books that enrich the mind and then there are those which poisons the mind."
russelison.com quotes, Intelligence/Wisdom
"To see a thing clearly in the mind makes it begin to take form."
Henry Ford, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense."
Henry Ford, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own."
Henry Ford, Success, Intelligence/Wisdom
"You can't learn in school what the world is going to do next year."
Henry Ford, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability."
Henry Ford, Wealth, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it."
Henry Ford, Intelligence/Wisdom, Work
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
Henry Ford, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young."
Henry Ford, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong."
George Carlin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently, I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
George Carlin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions."
George Carlin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything."
George Carlin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Life gets really simple once you cut out all the bulls**t they teach you in school."
George Carlin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
George Carlin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Think off-center."
George Carlin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Careful, if you think too much, they’ll take you away."
George Carlin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."
George Carlin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm."
Earl Nightingale, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Pay less attention to what men say. Just watch what they do."
Dale Carnegie , Intelligence/Wisdom
"Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind."
Dale Carnegie , Intelligence/Wisdom
"Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him."
Dale Carnegie , Intelligence/Wisdom
"Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Common sense is something that everyone needs, few have, and none think they lack."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Genius without education is like silver in the mine."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"When you’re testing to see how deep water is, never use two feet."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
"The only thing that is more expensive than education is ignorance."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man."
Benjamin Franklin, Intelligence/Wisdom
"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Any fool can know. The point is to understand."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work..."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The measure of intelligence is the ability to change."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"We all know that light travels faster than sound. That's why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Creativity is intelligence having fun."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Never memorize something that you can look up."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science."
Albert Einstein, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colours, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen. There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavours than can ever be tasted."
Sun Tzu, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom, Kindness, Courage
"Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom, Kindness
"There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is a reflection, which is the highest. The second is a limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"No matter how busy you make think you are you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Learn avidly. Question it repeatedly. Analyze it carefully. Then put what you have learned into practice intelligently."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Learn as if you were not reaching your goal and as though you were scared of missing it."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Study the past if you would define the future."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon and star."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The essence of knowledge is, having it, to use it."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room."
Confucius, Intelligence/Wisdom
"To know that you do not know is the best. To think you know when you do not is a disease. Recognizing this disease as a disease is to be free of it."
Lao Tzu, Intelligence/Wisdom
"To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day."
Lao Tzu, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know."
Lao Tzu, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”