Quotes about wisdom (2079 quotes, page 14)

“Though, in debating with regard to theories, it be lawful to say whether this or that is consistent with the Divine attributes, yet, when we find that God has actually done any thing, all question about its justice, wisdom, and benevolence, is forever out of place.”

Nehemiah Adams (1806–1878) Massachusetts clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 268.

God , Justice , Law , Question

“Geology has shared the fate of other infant sciences, in being for a while considered hostile to revealed religion; so like them, when fully understood, it will be found a potent and consistent auxiliary to it, exalting our conviction of the Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness of the Creator.”

William Buckland (1784–1856) English clergyman, geologist and palaeontologist

As quoted in The Age of the World : Moses to Darwin (1959) by Francis C. Haber, p. 221

Hostility , Fate , Religion , Science

“For earth cannot understand heavenly wisdom. Words enough and Dutch enough can be found for all things on earth, but I do not know any Dutch or any words that answer my purpose. Although I can express everything insofar as this is possible for a human being, no Dutch can be found for all I have said to you, since none exists to express these things, so far as I know”

Hadewijch (1200–1260) 13th-century Dutch poet and mystic

Letter XVII.
Letters

Understanding

“If it is God who gives the spirit of power and strength, then it is also the same God who gives “the spirt of self-control,” and if ignoble cowardice and fear of people are just as detestable in any age, the excess of eager enthusiasm, “zeal without wisdom,” are no less corrupting and at times are fundamentally just as detestable, just as blasphemous.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 323
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847)

God , People , Age , Fear

“The Ageless Wisdom Teachings”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

See Also

“The beginning of wisdom is to admit to being inept. We’re all a bit slow. We have our moments, but in the end, we have to resort to bumbling through. It is what makes conviction so egregious.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 40 (p. 376)

“Now I’m not saying that Keynes was right about everything, that we should treat The General Theory as a sort of secular bible - the way that Marxists treat Das Kapital. But the essential truth of Keynes’s big idea - that even the most productive economy can fail if consumers and investors spend too little, that the pursuit of sound money and balanced budgets is sometimes (not always!) folly rather than wisdom - is as evident in today’s world as it was in the 1930s. And in these dangerous days, we ignore or reject that idea at the world economy’s peril.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Why aren't we all Keynesians yet?", Fortune (Aug. 3, 1998)

Money , Truth , World , Way

“Contemporary philosophy illustrates Hegel’s dictum that philosophy is its own time apprehended in thought, for in our age philosophy yields to the objectifying technical impulse and loses its ancient task of pursuing the Socratic ideal of the wisdom of the examined life.”

Donald Phillip Verene (1937) philosopher

Source: Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge (1997), p. 191

Life , Age , Time

“Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.”

Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) American university teacher (1879-1962)

As quoted in ‪Encore : A Continuing Anthology‬ (March 1945) edited by Smith Dent, "Fischerisms" p. 309

Knowledge

“No solitary miscreant, scarcely any solitary maniac, would venture on such actions and imaginations, as large communities of sane men have, in such circumstances, entertained as sound wisdom.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Men , Imagination , Communication

“I suggest that we might want to depose this incumbent God and start dealing with The Real World. He's proven — time and again — to be cruel, capricious, and vindictive. He drowns, crushes, burns, and starves millions of us every day. He created cancer, viruses, and germs to invade and destroy our bodies as He sees fit, and uses them very effectively. In His wisdom, He directed those in charge to impede stem cell research so that such a powerful approach would not be available to us and He wouldn't have to strain the Divine Intellect to disarm that defense. We amuse Him as we flail about vainly trying to appease Him. I vote that we dump Him.”

James Randi (1928) Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic

Swift, 2 September 2005, "Off-Subject But Necessary" http://www.randi.org/jr/200509/090205alley.html#2; in response to efforts to deflect Hurricane Katrina by prayer.

God , World , Time

“Theology schools are the wisdom teeth of academia: useless and sometimes injurious remnants of earlier times. If you want to teach comparative religion in college, you can do it in sociology departments, and if you want to teach the history of religion or of how scripture was confected, you can do it in history departments. There is no rationale for a modern secular university to teach theology, for it is the study of a nonexistent being and its supposed wants.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Theology schools are dying https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/03/19/theology-schools-are-dying/" March 19, 2016

School , Religion , History , Study

“We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory. That function gives women such wisdom and power as no male can possess.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Diary of 27 December 1890. Published in Elizabeth Cady Stanton as revealed in her letters, diary and reminiscences http://books.google.com/books?id=CIsEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA270&dq=%22We+are,+as+a+sex,+infinitely+superior+to+men.%22+--&client=firefox-a#v=onepage&q=%22We%20are%2C%20as%20a%20sex%2C%20infinitely%20superior%20to%20men.%22%20--&f=false By Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriot Stanton Blatch. Harper & brothers, 1922. p 270. GoogleBooks URL accessed 18 September 2009.

Women , Men , Sex , Nature

“time in an allegory of itself imparts to us lessons of wisdom which the moment they are formulated are immediately destroyed by the merest flickers of light or shadow which are nothing more than time in its incarnations and disincarnations which are the phrases that I am writing on this paper and that disappears as I read them:
they are not the sensations, the perceptions, the mental images, and the thoughts which flare up and die away here, now, as I write or as I read what I write: they are not what I see or what I have seen, they are the reverse of what is seen and of the power of sight—but they are not the invisible: they are the unsaid residuum;
they are not the other side of reality but, rather, the other side of language, what we have on the tip of our tongue that vanishes before it is said, the other side that cannot be named because it is the opposite of a name:
what is not said is not this or that which we leave unsaid, nor is it neither-this-nor-that: it is not the tree that I say I see but the sensation that I feel on sensing that I see it at the moment when I am just about to say that I see it, an insubstantial but real conjunction of vibrations and sounds and meanings that on being combined suggest the configuration of a green-bronze-black-woody-leafy-sonorous-silent presence;
no, it is not that either, if it is not a name it surely cannot be the description of a name or the description of the sensation of the name or the name of the sensation:
a tree is not the name tree, nor is it the sensation of tree: it is the sensation of a perception of tree that dies away at the very moment of the perception of the sensation of tree;
names, as we already know, are empty, but what we did not know, or if we did know, had forgotten, is that sensations are perceptions of sensations that die away, sensations that vanish on becoming perceptions, since if they were not perceptions, how would we know that they are sensations?;
sensations that are not perceptions are not sensations, perceptions that are not names—what are they?
if you didn’t know it before, you know now: everything is empty;
and the moment I say everything-is-empty, I am aware that I am falling into a trap: if everything is empty, this everything-is-empty is empty too;
no, it is full, full to overflowing, everything-is-empty is replete with itself, what we touch and see and taste and smell and think, the realities that we invent and the realities that touch us, look at us, hear us, and invent us, everything that we weave and unweave and everything that weaves and unweaves us, momentary appearances and disappearances, each one different and unique, is always the same full reality, always the same fabric that is woven as it is unwoven: even total emptiness and utter privation are plenitude (perhaps they are the apogee, the acme, the consummation and the calm of plenitude), everything is full to the brim, everything is real, all these invented realities and all these very real inventions are full of themselves, each and every one of them, replete with their own reality;
and the moment I say this, they empty themselves: things empty themselves and names fill themselves, they are no longer empty, names are plethoras, they are donors, they are full to bursting with blood, milk, semen, sap, they are swollen with minutes, hours, centuries, pregnant with meanings and significations and signals, they are the secret signs that time makes to itself, names suck the marrow from things, things die on this page but names increase and multiply, things die in order that names may live:”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Secret , Feeling , Thinking , Reality

“He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

On Orson Welles, as quoted in The New York Times (11 October 1985)

World , Solitude , Madness

“Eric's not retiring from television entirely, but only from daily journalism, and that means, of course, this broadcast. It's not only his beautifully-chosen words of wisdom that we shall miss — to this newsman, he's one of the finest essayists of this century — but we shall also miss our almost daily contacts with him in the pursuit of our craft, in which his rare insight and unswerving integrity were a constant source of professional guidance. And yes, it's also true that we shall be the poorer in our self-esteem for no longer being able to call him "colleague," but that's the way it is: Wednesday, November 30, 1977. This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News; good night.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

On Eric Sevareid's retirement (1977)

Way , Night

“Lincoln's appeal to "the better angels of our nature" failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Concurring, Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958).
Judicial opinions

War , Angels , Way , Nature

“Here we are after a couple million years of natural selection has produced a race that overpopulates and makes war and dominates and rapes, and you want to know about wisdom! Natural selection doesn’t select for wisdom!”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 194)

War , Nature

“These are primitive beginnings in art, such as one usually finds in ethnographic collections or at home in one's nursery. Do not laugh, reader! Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in their having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved from corruption at an early age. Parallel phenomena are provided by the works of the mentally diseased; neither childish behaviour nor madness are insulting words here, as they commonly are. All this is to be taken very seriously, more seriously than all the public galleries, when it comes to reforming today's art.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary entry (January 1912), # 905, quoting his "Munich Art Letter" in the journal Die Alpen
1911 - 1914

Children , Age , Disease , Art

“A faith, like a species, must evolve or go extinct when the environment changes. It is not a gentle process in either case. … It's nice to have grizzly bears and wolves living in the wild. They are no longer a menace; we can peacefully co-exist, with a little wisdom. The same policy can be discerned in our political tolerance, in religious freedom. You are free to preserve or create any religious creed you wish, so long as it does not become a public menace. We're all on the Earth together, and we have to learn some accommodation. … The message is clear: those who will not accommodate, who will not temper, who insist on keeping only the purest and wildest strain of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly, to cage or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes they fight for. Slavery is beyond the pale. Child abuse is beyond the pale. Discrimination is beyond the pale. The pronouncing of death sentences on those who blaspheme against a religion (complete with bounties or reward for those who carry them out) is beyond the pale. It is not civilized, and it is owed no more respect in the name of religious freedom than any other incitement to cold-blooded murder. … That is — or, rather, ought to be, the message of multiculturalism, not the patronizing and subtly racist hypertolerance that "respects" vicious and ignorant doctrines when they are propounded by officials of non-European states and religions.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Death , Faith , Religion , Freedom

“For the world to follow, we must do more than rattle our sabers and demand allegienace to our vision simply because we believe we are right. We must provide a reason for others to aspire to that vision. And that reason must come with more than the repetition of a bumper-sticker phrase about freedom and democracy. It must come with more than the restatement of failed policy. It must come with the wisdom to admit when we are wrong and resolve to change course and get it right.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 353
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

World , Democracy , Freedom , Change

“In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

The Snow-Image, and Other Tales, Preface http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/sipf.html (1852)

Life , Men , Youth , Feeling

“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Evil , Madness

“The fundamental tenet of the Védántí school, to which in a more modern age the incomparable Sancara was a firm and illustrious adherent, consisted, not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but, in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending, that it has no essence independent of mental perception, that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms, that external appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing if the divine energy, which alone sustains them, were suspended but for a moment; an opinion which Epicharmus and Plato seem to have adopted, and which has been maintained in the present century with great elegance, but with little publick applause; partly because it has been misunderstood, and partly because it has been misapplied by the false reasoning of some unpopular writers, who are said to have disbelieved in the moral attributes of God, whose omnipresence, wisdom, and goodness are the basis of the Indian philosophy… [N]othing can be farther removed from impiety than a system wholly built on the purest devotion; and the inexpressible difficulty, which any man, who shall make the attempt, will assuredly find in giving a satisfactory definition of material substance, must induce us to deliberate with coolness, before we censure the learned and pious restorer of the ancient Véda; though we cannot but admit, that, if the common opinions of mankind be the criterion of philosophical truth, we must adhere to the system of Gotama, which the Bráhmens of this province almost universally follow.”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

II. pp. 238-239
"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

God , Truth , Age , School

“The average man looks up at night And sees thousands and thousands, of twinkling stars, Each different from the others. But a man of wisdom and achievement, Perceives the one light, Behind the dark dome of the night-sky, Whose incandescence peeps at us, Through all the holes in the night-dome!!”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Star , Light , Night

“The health of a church depends not merely on the creed which it professes, not even on the wisdom and holiness of a few great ecclesiastics, but on the faith and virtue of its individual members.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Source: Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 147.

Health , Faith , Dependency

“The place that Solomon made to worship in,
called the Far Mosque, is not built of earth
and water and stone, but of intention and wisdom
and mystical conversation and compassionate action.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

"The Far Mosque" in Ch. 17 : Solomon Poems, p. 191
Disputed, The Essential Rumi (1995)

Water

“By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Age , Time

“The most valuable stage of wisdom is the stage of self-consciousness.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 352.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

“I tweet, therefore my entire life has shrunk to 140 character chunks of instant event and predigested gnomic wisdom. And swearing.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Neil Gaiman's Twitter stream http://twitter.com/neilhimself, Tweet ID # 1178514410, (5 February 2009) http://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1178514410

Life

“It is Amma’s prayer that we develop the expansive-mindedness to embrace both scientific knowledge and spiritual wisdom. We can no longer afford to see these two streams of knowledge as flowing in opposite directions. In truth, they compliment one another. If we merge these streams, we will find that we are able to create a mighty river—a river whose waters can remove suffering and spread life to all of humanity.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Amritanandamayi's Address Upon Receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the State University of New York (2010)

Life , Truth , Knowledge , Suffering

“Because wisdom in action in our Western democracies rests squarely upon public understanding, I have long believed that our schools have a key role to play. Peace could, I believe, be advanced through careful study of all the factors which have gone into the various incidents now historical that have marked the breakdown of peace in the past. As an initial procedure our schools, at least our colleges but preferably our senior high schools, as we call them, should have courses which not merely instruct our budding citizens in the historical sequence of events of the past, but which treat with almost scientific accuracy the circumstances which have marked the breakdown of peace and have led to the disruption of life and the horrors of war.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

Essentials to Peace (1953)

Life , War , School , Peace

“We are accustomed to seeing the horrific acts of history as the handiwork of evil individuals. The Second World War will forever be seen as a consequence of Hitler. The tens of millions who died in the Cultural Revolution in China died at the hands of Mao and his followers. The war between Radical Islam and the West will forever be directly tied to the actions of Osama Bin Laden. But likewise, great victories need to be judged in the same manner. You cannot separate the victory over the Nazis from the heroism and wisdom of Winston Churchill. The preservation of the Union during the American Civil War was a direct consequence of Lincoln’s Leadership. Likewise, the Berlin Wall did not randomly topple over. The hand of Reagan is visible.”

Peter Schweizer (1964) American writer

How Reagan, Not Fate, Brought Down the Berlin Wall http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/11/09/the-unlikely-fall-of-the-berlin-wall/ (November 9, 2017)

War , World , History , Evil

“Learning is all that mass of facts, and of judgments on the facts, and of conclusions drawn therefrom; wisdom is the extracted essence of the whole, that which the Soul has gathered out of all these experiences, and it is, as you are aware, its work in Devachan to turn these experiences into wisdom.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

p. 55

Soul , Learning

“I'm looking for a market for wisdom.”

Leó Szilárd (1898–1964) Physicist and biologist

As quoted in "Close-up : I'm looking for a market for wisdom. : Leo Szilard, scientist" in LIFE‎ magazine, Vol. 51, no. 9 (1 September 1961), p. 75

“Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 117
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Way , Feeling , Nature , Suffering

“An aphorism can contain only as much wisdom as overstatement will permit.”

Clifton Fadiman (1904–1999) American editor

Introduction to Unkempt Thoughts, St. Martin's Press (1962)

“Wisdom … never closes her school of thought but always opens her doors to those who thirst for the sweet water of discourse, and pouring on them an unstinted stream of undiluted doctrine, persuades them to be drunken with the drunkenness which is soberness itself.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

13.
Every Good Man is Free

School , Water

“Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.”
Non aetate, verum ingenio apiscitur sapientia.

Plautus Trinummus

Trinummus, Act II, sc. 2, line 88.
Trinummus (The Three Coins)

Age

“SPAN ID=Language_that_is> Language, that is to say, is the indispensable mechanism of human life -- of life such as ours that is molded, guided, enriched, and made possible by the accumulation of the past experience of members of our own species. Dogs and cats and chimpanzees do not, so far as we can tell, increase their wisdom, their information, or their control over their environment from one generation to the next. But human beings do. The cultural accomplishment of the ages, the invention of cooking, […] and the discovery of all the arts and sciences come to us as free gifts from the dead. These gifts, which none of us has done anything to earn, offer us not only the opportunity for a richer life than our forebears enjoyed but also the opportunity to add to the sum total of human achievement by our own contributions, however small they may be. </SPAN”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Pooling of Knowledge, p. 13

Life , Age , Dogs , Art

“Even a false imitation of wisdom must be reckoned as wisdom.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

Source: Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness), p. 85

Falseness

“But science is permitted because this wisdom is like a ladder to climb to the Torah wisdom.”

Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1512–1609) Czech rabbi

Netiv Hatorah 14

Science

“Thought the fool is to be pitied, still he is spared watching spurious wisdom turn to ashes in his head.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 115

Fools

“Silence is one of the gates to wisdom.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 523.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

Silence

“The intricate and different life cycles of both male and female root-heads, and the great behavioral sophistication shown by the female in reconfiguring a host crab as a support system, all underscore the myopia of our conventional wisdom in regarding rhizocephalans as degenerate parasites because the adult anatomy of internal roots and external sac seem so simple.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 371
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Life , Behavior , Support

“Rosenberg, Teya; Hixon, Martha P.; Scapple, Sharon M.; White, Donna R. Diana Wynne Jones - An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom (New York: Peter Lang, 2002). ISBN 082045687X”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

References

“Receiving education nurtures human wisdom.”

Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 128
Regarding Wisdom

Education

“Something about the possession of a book - an object that can contain infinite fables, words of wisdom, chronicles of times gone by, humorous anecdotes and divine revelation - endows the reader with the power of creating a story, and the listener with a sense of being present at the moment of creation.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Being Read To, p. 120.
A History of Reading (1996)

Books , Sense , Time

“This explains the instant satisfaction and growing reward which comes to every man who aspires to a higher life, who covets wisdom, who pursues beauty, who idealizes and worships his ideals.”

John William Lloyd (1857–1940) American anarchist, sexologist, utopian theorist and author (1857-1940)

Source: The Natural Man (1902), p. 100

Life , Beauty

“Man is the animal with a soul who thinks and builds; his penetrating insights into the laws of nature are there for any child to learn, and his impressive mastery of the materials of the earth stands ready to be imitated by anyone, but the home he has built for his own kind is still a lonely and impoverished place for many people. There is nothing about that loneliness that wisdom cannot change; there is nothing in that poverty that strength cannot overcome. Separated from each other, the thinker is a stranger in his own house, and the builder is a beggar at his own door. Together, they can bring the warmth of love and the helpfulness of power into the daily market place of living, taking a human position that is eternal and without compromise. In the midst of the obvious and the commonplace, and only in this birthplace of human contentment and happiness, the thinker and builder can leave the monastic cell and relinquish barracks mobility to claim the world in the name of human beings. When they do so, man can expect a human harvest equal to his dreams, and measured to the nobility of his posture.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

Psychoanalysis and Civilization

Love , People , World , Law

“The old theory that [the Great Pyramid] was built as a vault or tomb for an Egyptian king is unworthy of credence; for, as we shall see, it required more than the wisdom of the present day, to say nothing of that of Egypt four thousand years ago, to design such a structure. Besides, it contains nothing in the way of a casket, mummy or inscription. It was not until we had come into the time called in Daniel's prophecy "the Time of the End", when knowledge should be increased, and the wise should understand God's plan (Dan. 12:4, 9, 10), that the secrets of the Great Pyramid began to be understood, and our questions began to have a reasonable answer.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 319.

God , Secret , Way , Understanding

“I think we have two choices in the face of such big beauty: terror and awe. And this is precisely why we attempt to chart God, because we want to be able to predict Him, to dissect Him, to carry Him around in our dog and pony show. We are too proud to feel awe and to fearful to feel terror. We reduce Him to math so we don't have to fear Him, and yet the Bible tells us fear is the appropriate response, that it is the beginning of wisdom.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

God , Fear , Beauty , Dogs

“I was never interested in the obvious, or in the details one takes for granted, and everybody seemed to be addicted to the obvious, being astonished by it, and forever harping about the details which I had long ago weighted, measured, and discarded as irrelevant and useless. If you can measure it, don't. If you can weigh it, it isn't worth the bother. It isn't what you're after. It isn't going to get it. My wisdom was visual and as swift as vision. I looked, I saw, I understood, I felt, "That's that, where do we go from here?"”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

.
Here Comes There Goes You Know Who (1961)

“The man of wisdom is the man of years.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 775.

“As yonder tower outstretches to the earth
The dark triangle of its shade alone
When the clear day is shining on its top;
So, darkness in the pathway of man's life
Is but the shadow of God's providence,
By the great Sun of wisdom cast thereon;
And what is dark below is light in heaven.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 282

Life , God , Light , Sun

“But by and by the time came when the Christian Church apostatized and turned away, and began to follow after their own wisdom, and the Prophets and Apostles ceased, so far as the affairs of the Christian Church on the earth were concerned. Revelations, and visions, and the various gifts of the spirit were also taken away, according to their unbelief and apostacy; but in the latter days God intends to again raise up a Christian Church upon the earth. Do not be startled, you who think that God will no more have a Church on the earth, for he has promised that he would again have one, and that he would set up his kingdom, and when he does you may look out for a great many Prophets and inspired men; and if you ever see a Church arise, calling itself a Christian Church, and it has not inspired Apostles like those in ancient times, you may know that it is a spurious church, and that it makes pretensions to something that it does not enjoy. If you ever find a church called a Christian Church that has no men to foretell future events, you may know, at once, that it is not a Christian Church. If you find a Christian Church that has not the ancient gifts, for instance the gift of healing, opening the eyes of the blind, unstopping the ears of the deaf, causing the tongue of the dumb to speak and the lame to walk; if you ever find a people calling themselves a Christian Church and they have not these gifts among them, you may know with a perfect knowledge that they do not agree with the pattern given in the New Testament. The Christian Church is always characterized with inspired men, whose revelations are just as sacred as any contained in the Bible; and, if written and published, just as binding upon the human family. The Christian Church will always lay hands upon the sick in the name of Jesus, in order that the sick may be healed. The Christian Church will always have those among its members who have heavenly visions, the ministration of angels, and the various gifts that are promised according to the Gospel.”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 18:171-172 (March 26, 1876).
Apostacy

Men , God , People , Family

“"He's too far ahead of us. We can't compete with him." Wisdom's eyes were bleak. "We can only guess what's going to happen. He knows. For him, it's a sure thing. I don't think it'll help him at euth, though. The whole stage is flooded simultaneously. Instantaneous gas, released throughout." He signalled impatiently to the guards. "Get going. Take him down right away. Don't waste any time."”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

The Golden Man (1954)

Thinking , Time , Help

“The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

People , Hope , Learning , Science

“The bones of Cambodia, and the millions who risked death to flee communist Vietnam and Laos for an uncertain life anywhere else, tells us about the moral value, though not necessarily the military tactical wisdom, of the anti-communist cause.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Life , Death

“We define a fruitful partnership between our twin professions of librarian and information systems scientist in support of this adventure in creativity, and the pursuit of wisdom? If it is the nature of the creative mind that it sets out to grapple with the tensions and contradictions in the "paradigm", as Kuhn calls it, it follows that first of all one must know what the paradigm is.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Librarians and Information Systems (1995)

Support , Nature , Partnership

“He preached to himself, as Max Gottlieb had once preached to him, the loyalty of dissent, the faith of being very doubtful, the gospel of not bawling gospels, the wisdom of admitting the probable ignorance of one's self and of everybody else, and the energetic acceleration of a Movement for going very slow.”

Sinclair Lewis book Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith (1925), Ch 21

Faith , Loyalty

“The nine Wise Words are full of wisdom, besides being decidedly funny.”

John Tenniel (1820–1914) British illustrator, graphic humourist and political cartoonist

Of Carroll's essay Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing; p. 18
M. N. Cohen & E. Wakeling, Lewis Carroll and his Illustrators (2003)

“After so many great men have worked on this subject, I almost do not dare to say that I have discovered the universal principle upon which all these laws are based, a principle that covers both elastic and inelastic collisions and describes the motion and equilibrium of all material bodies.
This is the principle of least action, a principle so wise and so worthy of the supreme Being, and intrinsic to all natural phenomena; one observes it at work not only in every change, but also in every constancy that Nature exhibits. In the collision of bodies, motion is distributed such that the quantity of action is as small as possible, given that the collision occurs. At equilibrium, the bodies are arranged such that, if they were to undergo a small movement, the quantity of action would be smallest.
The laws of motion and equilibrium derived from this principle are exactly those observed in Nature. We may admire the applications of this principle in all phenomena: the movement of animals, the growth of plants, the revolutions of the planets, all are consequences of this principle. The spectacle of the universe seems all the more grand and beautiful and worthy of its Author, when one considers that it is all derived from a small number of laws laid down most wisely. Only thus can we gain a fitting idea of the power and wisdom of the supreme Being, not from some small part of creation for which we know neither the construction, usage, nor its relationship to other parts. What satisfaction for the human spirit in contemplating these laws of motion and equilibrium for all bodies in the universe, and in finding within them proof of the existence of Him who governs the universe!”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Men , Law , Beauty , Idea

“Since the late 19th century, aging has been the normal state of all industrial societies; it is a sustained trend. Societies designed to cater to the needs of aging populations will soon become the accepted political condition of our species. Acknowledging that fact will, at some point, slide so smoothly into the conventional wisdom that future generations may not realize that this is a major new feature of modern life, this is different, this is not what human culture was ever meant to be—and it all started now.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

The Making of an Elder Culture (2009)

Life , Age , Future

“Is there an inverse relation between knowledge and wisdom? At times it seems the more we know, the less we understand.
I am not the first to note this quandary. One scholar recently wrote, “Lysos and her followers chase the siren call of pastoralism, like countless romantics before them, idealizing a past Golden Age that never was, pursuing a serenity possible only in the imagination.””

David Brin book Glory Season

Introduction to Chapter 26 (p. 502)
Glory Season (1993)

Age , Imagination , Understanding , Knowledge

“Just as the good physician should go and offer his services where the sick are most numerous, so, said [ Diogenes], the man of wisdom should take up his abode where fools are thickest in order to convict them of their folly and reprove them.”

Dio Chrysostom (40–120) Greek philosopher

Source: On Virtue, p. 379

Fools

“Me com swiðe oft on gemynd, hwelce wiotan iu wæron giond Angelcynn, ægðer ge godcundra hada ge woruldcundra; ond hu gesæliglica tida ða wæron giond Angelcynn; ond hu ða kyningas ðe ðone onwald hæfdon ðæs folces Gode ond his ærendwrecum hiersumedon; ond hie ægðer ge hiora sibbe ge hiora siodu ge hiora onweald innanbordes gehioldon, ond eac ut hiora eðel rymdon; ond hu him ða speow ægðer ge mid wige ge mid wisdome; ond eac ða godcundan hadas, hu giorne hie wæron ægðer ge ymb lare ge ymb liornunga, ge ymb ealle ða ðiowotdomas ðe hie Gode don scoldon; ond hu man utanbordes wisdom ond lare hieder on lond sohte; ond hu we hie nu sceoldon ute begietan, gif we hie habban sceoldon.”

Alfred the Great (849–899) King of Wessex

Very often it has come to my mind what men of learning there were formerly throughout England, both in religious and secular orders; and how there were happy times then throughout England; and how the kings, who had authority over this people, obeyed God and his messengers; and how they not only maintained their peace, morality and authority at home but also extended their territory outside; and how they succeeded both in warfare and in wisdom; and also how eager were the religious orders both in teaching and in learning as well as in all the holy services which it was their duty to perform for God; and how people from abroad sought wisdom and instruction in this country; and how nowadays, if we wished to acquire these things, we would have to seek them outside.
Source: Preface to his translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, p. 124.

“It would be pleasant to believe that the age of pessimism is now coming to a close, and that its end is marked by the same author who marked its beginning: Aldous Huxley. After thirty years of trying to find salvation in mysticism, and assimilating the Wisdom of the East, Huxley published in 1962 a new constructive utopia, The Island. In this beautiful book he created a grand synthesis between the science of the West and the Wisdom of the East, with the same exceptional intellectual power which he displayed in his Brave New World. (His gaminerie is also unimpaired; his close union of eschatology and scatology will not be to everybody's tastes.) But though his Utopia is constructive, it is not optimistic; in the end his island Utopia is destroyed by the sort of adolescent gangster nationalism which he knows so well, and describes only too convincingly.
This, in a nutshell, is the history of thought about the future since Victorian days. To sum up the situation, the sceptics and the pessimists have taken man into account as a whole; the optimists only as a producer and consumer of goods. The means of destruction have developed pari passu with the technology of production, while creative imagination has not kept pace with either.
The creative imagination I am talking of works on two levels. The first is the level of social engineering, the second is the level of vision.”

Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography

In my view both have lagged behind technology, especially in the highly advanced Western countries, and both constitute dangers.
Source: Inventing the Future (1963), p. 18-19

Books , Age , World , Beauty

“You can make life a lot harder for yourself by focusing on negative things in your path or making excuses for why things didn't go your way. Or, you can refuse to take things personally, let them go, learn from them, and become the best version of yourself. It's a choice. It's actually your choice. If I throw an interception or have a bad day or make a bad business decision, by staying in that place I will just make things worse. Wisdom, someone said, is about knowing the difference between the things you can control and the things you can't. Today, if things go my way, great; and if they don't, that's okay, too, since I always have the chance to overcome them in the future. Whenever my team loses a game, it's an opportunity to learn something. A game is always an experiment.”

Tom Brady (1977) American football quarterback

The TB12 Method (Simon & Schuster, 2017), pp. 271 https://books.google.it/books?id=5xQrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT271-272.

Life , Way , Game , Business

“The egotism of wisdom: to burn all that is pettily, painfully, stupidly selfish in the fire of love of spiritual vision and freedom.”

Vilhelm Ekelund (1880–1949) Swedish poet

Source: The Second Light (1986), p. 14

Love , Freedom , Selfishness

“The Bible is a seemingly inexhaustible source of practical wisdom that could serve as a valuable resource for everyday living.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 81

“The exclusion of true or esoteric religion has been the business of the State since ancient times. At first this was done via the establishment of the popular idealism of exoteric religious institutions in league with the State. But in modern times the same process is done by the strategic exclusion of conventional religious cultism, mystical idealism, and higher evolutionary Wisdom from the mechanisms of popular culture.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

http://www.firmstand.org/articles/separation_of_church_and_state.html

Religion , Business , Time

“Teddy Long could never hang out at the Palace of Wisdom..”

John Hennigan (1979) American professional wrestler

The Palace Of Wisdom

“Our Lord says, to those who can hear what Wisdom speaks beneath a mystery, that "the Kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). That word points out the fact that the Divine good is not something apart from our nature, and is not removed far away from those who have the will to seek it; it is in fact within each of us, ignored indeed, and unnoticed while it is stifled beneath the cares and pleasures of life, but found again whenever we can turn our power of conscious thinking towards it.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 11

Life , God , Pleasure , Nature

“So, in our wisdom and fair justice we go on—"Giving to dust that is a little gilt, More laud than gold e'er dusted;" proclaiming the merits of the bad wine, and making it, by every token, as enticing as we can; and blessing our stars that the good will be found out by its flavor "without our stir." As it is inestimable, we seek not to win esteem for it; as it is beyond all praise, we bestow no praises upon it.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That Good Wine Needs No Bush".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Justice , Star , Wine

“This Bible, then, has a mission, grander than any mere creation of God; for in this volume are infinite wisdom, and infinite love. Between its covers are the mind and heart of God; and they are for man's good, for his salvation, his guidance, his spiritual nourishment. If now I neglect my Bible, I do my soul a wrong; for the fact of this Divine message is evidence that I need it.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 32.

Love , God , Soul , Heart

“Faith is the best wealth for a man in this world. Righteousness when well practised brings happiness. Truth is the sweetest of flavours. They say the life of one living by wisdom is the best.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

§ 182
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), (Suttas falling down)

Life , Truth , World , Faith

“"We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim…" Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away."”

Evelyn Waugh book Black Mischief

First lines
Black Mischief (1932)

Life , God , People , Art

“I should wish, however, to know what this reason is, through which we are more excellent than all the tribes of animals. Is it because we have made for ourselves houses, by which we can avoid the cold of winter and heat of summer? What! do not the other animals show forethought in this respect? … But if nature, which gave them life, had chosen to give to them also hands to help them, they too would, without doubt, raise lofty buildings and strike out new works of art. Yet, even in those things which they make with beaks and claws, we see that there are many appearances of reason and wisdom which we men are unable to copy, however much we ponder them, although we have hands to serve us dexterously in every kind of work.”

Arnobius (255–327) Christian apologist

Book II, § 17
Adversus Nationes

Life , Men , Art , Nature

“The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply asserts being, "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2006, Faith, Reason and the University — Memories and Reflections (2006)

God , Faith , Religion , Way

“It is the nature of the noble and the good and the wise that they impart to us of their nobility and their goodness and their wisdom while they live, making it natural for us to breathe the air they breathe and giving us confidence in our own untested powers. And the same influence in more ethereal fashion they continue to exert after they are gone.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Confidence , Fashion , Nature

“Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.”

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. XI, pp. 313–4

Men , Youth

“A religious spirit animates the infancy of our literature, and must continue to gloe in its maturity. The public taste calls for this quality, and would relish no work in which it might be supplanted by a principle of infidelity. Our best authors have written under the influence of Christian feeling; but had they been destitute of this sentiment, they would have found it necessary to accommodate themselves to the opinions of the people, and follow Christian precedents. The beneficent influence of religion on literature, is like that of our evening sun, when it awakens in the clouds those beautiful and burning tints, which clothe the firmament in gold and purple. It constitutes the heart of learning - the great source of its moral power. Religion addresses itself to the highest and holiest of our sentiments - benevolence and veneration, and their excitement stirs up the imagination, strengthens the undeerstanding, and purifies the taste. Thus, both in the mind of the author and the reader, Christianity and literature act and react on each other, with the effect of elevating both, and carrying the human character to the highest perfection which it is destined to reach. Learning should be proud of this companionship, and exert all her wisdom to render it perpetual.”

Daniel Drake (1785–1852) American physician and writer

Daniel Drake (1834). Discourse on the History, Character, and Prospects of the West: Delivered to the Union Literary Society of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at Their Ninth Anniversary, September 23, 1834. Truman and Smith. p. 31

People , Religion , Beauty , Feeling

“It seems to me that if God had intended for you to cover your face then, in His wisdom, He would have provided you with a flap of skin for the purpose.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"The trouble with Islam" (16 March 2007)
2007

God

“The extreme limit of wisdom — that’s what the public calls madness.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)

Madness

“Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom. But I include in the word bourgeois, the bourgeois in blouses as well the bourgeois in coats. It is we and we alone, that is to say the literary men, who are the people, or to say it better: the tradition of humanity.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Source: Correspondence, Letters to George Sand, 10 May 1867

Men , People

“The view of things [called Pantheism] … — that all plurality is only apparent, that in the endless series of individuals, passing simultaneously and successively into and out of life, generation after generation, age after age, there is but one and the same entity really existing, which is present and identical in all alike; — this theory … may be carried back to the remotest antiquity. It is the alpha and omega of the oldest book in the world, the sacred Vedas, whose dogmatic part, or rather esoteric teaching, is found in the Upanishads. There, in almost every page this profound doctrine lies enshrined; with tireless repetition, in countless adaptations, by many varied parables and similes it is expounded and inculcated. That such was, moreover, the fount whence Pythagoras drew his wisdom, cannot be doubted … That it formed practically the central point in the whole philosophy of the Eleatic School, is likewise a familiar fact. Later on, the New Platonists were steeped in the same … In the ninth century we find it unexpectedly appearing in Europe. It kindles the spirit of no less a divine than Johannes Scotus Erigena, who endeavours to clothe it with the forms and terminology of the Christian religion. Among the Mohammedans we detect it again in the rapt mysticism of the Sufi. In the West Giordano Bruno cannot resist the impulse to utter it aloud; but his reward is a death of shame and torture. And at the same time we find the Christian Mystics losing themselves in it, against their own will and intention, whenever and wherever we read of them! Spinoza's name is identified with it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 269 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/269/mode/2up-272
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Life , Death , Books , Age

“What is wisdom? Always desiring the same things, and always refusing the same things.”
quid est sapienta? semper idem velle atque idem nolle.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Here, Seneca uses the same observation that Sallust made regarding friendship (in his historical account of the Catilinarian conspiracy, Bellum Catilinae[XX.4]) to define wisdom.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XX: On practicing what you preach, Line 5

“Yes, beloved brothers, every one who is thus rightly taught of God, in this wisdom (for she is the wisdom of the saints), may glory, by the grace given them, over all graduated doctors, theologists, jurists, orators and poets, although he could neither write norspeak, and were he the most helpless upon earth. But all those who are not instructed in the wisdom from God, though they were as glorious as Solomon, as victorious as Alexander, as rich as Crosesis, as strong as Hercules, as learned as Plato, as subtle as Aristotle, as eloquent as Demosthenes and Cicero, and as well skilled in languages as Mithridates; yea, so greatly experienced that his like were not to be found from the beginning, nevertheless, he is a fool in the eyes of the Lord; this must be confessed.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Ibid, p.106

God , Fools , Strong , Learning

“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book I, Ch. 26
Attributed
Variant: The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

“There is no capital more useful than intellect and wisdom, and there is no indigence more injurious than ignorance and unawareness.
Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 198”

Ali (601–661) cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad

Variant translation: There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

“Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.”

Joseph Roux (1834–1905) French poet

Part 4, XXVIII (1886)
Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)

“Submission to Allah's Will is the best companion; wisdom is the noblest heritage; theoretical and practical knowledge are the best signs of distinction; deep thinking will present the clearest picture of every problem.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Knowledge , Problem , Thinking

“Only he is the true teacher [Satguru] who can show what are the religious and social obligations [dharma], show God to you, and give you the Knowledge of the holy name [sat nam]. And he who can give you the Knowledge of this dharma is completely wise. Satguru is the one who has the perfect wisdom. And other than the Satguru no one has the perfect wisdom. Oh! People of the world! Only a perfect avatar with the sixty-four virtues [kala] can reveal this Knowledge.”

Hans Ji Maharaj (1900–1966) Indian guru

Bombay, March 1966
Alternative translation: "Lord Rama was an incarnation of God who possessed 14 types of divine power. Lord Krishna was an incarnation of God who possessed 26 types of divine power. But I am fully perfect and the master of all the 64 divine powers."
This alternative translation, very different from the original Hindi, appeared in a book named Satgurudev (1970). It has been used by several scholars (Messer, Glock and Bellah; Reender Kranenborg) to position Hans Ji Maharaj as claiming to be more powerful than Krishna.
Source: Gupta, Mahendra. Hans Puran, (1969) New Delhi

God , People , World , Knowledge

“Five score years ago the ground on which we here stand shuddered under the clash of arms and was consecrated for all time by the blood of American manhood. Abraham Lincoln, in dedicating this great battlefield, has expressed, in words too eloquent for paraphrase or summary, why this sacrifice was necessary. Today, we meet not to add to his words nor to amend his sentiment but to recapture the feeling of awe that comes when contemplating a memorial to so many who placed their lives at hazard for right, as God gave them to see right. Among those who fought here were young men who but a short time before were pursuing truth in the peaceful halls of the then new University of Notre Dame. Since that time men of Notre Dame have proven, on a hundred battlefields, that the words, "For God, For Country, and For Notre Dame," are full of meaning. Let us pray that God may grant us the wisdom to find and to follow a path that will enable the men of Notre Dame and all of our young men to seek truth in the halls of study rather than on the field of battle."”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Message from the President on the Occasion of Field Mass at Gettysburg, delivered by John S. Gleason, Jr." (29 June 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx; Box 10, President's Outgoing Executive Correspondence, White House Central Chronological Files, Papers of John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
1963

Men , God , Truth , Peace

“To know oneself means, among other things, to know oneself qua non-sage: that is, not as a sophos, but as a philo-sophos, someone on the way toward wisdom.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 90
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre (2001)

Way

“Believe that many precepts are better than much wealth; for wealth quickly fails us, but precepts abide through all time; for wisdom alone of all possessions is imperishable. Do not hesitate to travel a long road to those who profess to offer some useful instruction; for it were a shame, when merchants cross vast seas in order to increase their store of wealth, that the young should not endure even journeys by land to improve their understanding.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verse 19; variant translation: Of all our possessions, wisdom alone is immortal.
As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (1906), edited by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 495.
To Demonicus

Travel , Understanding , Time , Sea

“While those who lusted for undeserved power, and their many misguided followers, were embarked upon a malignant enterprise against their homeland and its leaders, most successors to ancient warriors and the ethically naked but finely attired retailers of divine wisdom sank deeper into the ashes of their own vice.”

Vijay R. Singh (1931–2006) Fijian politician

Speaking Out (2006)