Quotes about wisdom

Or, as Kazantzakis expressed it, the real meaning of enlightenment is "to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darknesses."

“Just what is your position here?”

“I’m an adviser to his Majesty.” Nicodaeus smiled blandly. “He thinks I’m a master of magic, of course, but among these feather-heads a little common sense is sufficient to earn one a reputation as a wise man.”

Always be smart; seldom be certain.

I belong to the generation of 1968, which, throughout the world, hoped to recast society on the model of the imagination. I have tried to learn from disappointment and defeat, but I have not despaired. "If the fool would persist in his folly," wrote William Blake, "he would become wise."

Who was it who said that a wise man speaks when he has something to say, but a fool speaks because he must?

It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it.

...Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.

Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger...

Strange, that when we feel we understand all things, we understand nothing. Strange, that when we feel we understand nothing, we have begun, at last, to understand.

The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle.

Wisdom leads us back to childhood.

All good maxims are in the world. We only need apply them.