Quotes about wisdom
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“If you seek to understand the whole universe, you will understand nothing at all. If you seek to understand yourself, you will understand to whole universe.”

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

Understanding, Universe

“It takes humility to seek feedback. It takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it, and appropriately act on it.”

Stephen R. Dovez

Understanding

“Knowledge comes from learning. Wisdom comes from living. ”

Энтони Дуглас Уильямс

Knowledge, Learning

“The history of culture shows that foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom. It does not flourish on the fields of pure ignorance but on the fields tirelessly plowed by doctors and professors. Great absurdities do not flourish where one is busy with everyday life. No wonder that sometimes most vigorous thinkers come up with utmost stupidities.”

Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969) Polish writer

Life, Stupidity, History, Business

“Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom though failure. We get very little wisdom from success.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

People, Failure, Success

“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

“Knowledge may come from study, but wisdom come from learning and improving in the wake of your mistakes.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Knowledge, Study, Learning

“The past is wisdom.
The present is love.
The future is possibilities.”

Ralph Smart

Love, Making love, Past, Future

“Leadership does not mean domination. The world is always well supplied with people who wish to rule and dominate others.
The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity which has a truly beneficient purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Speech on Leadership in Speeches Delivered on Various Occasions, May 1957-December 1959 (1960), p. 138

People, World, Way

“Today's reality
Fancy phone…. but afraid to connect
Big house…. small family
Expensive watch.…no time
Lot of friends on facebook…. no best friends
Great knowledge…. no wisdom
Lots of humans.…no humanity
Love animals…. eat animals
High IQ…. less emotions
Touched the moon…. neighbours unknown
Advanced medicine…. poor health
More degrees…. less common sense
Love sex…. fear intimacy”

Ralph Smart

facebook

Love, Health, Fear, Making love

“Thus, what with several generations of most active Church Fathers ever working at the destruction of old documents and the preparation of new passages to be interpolated in those which happened to survive, there remains of the Gnostics -- the legitimate offspring of the Archaic Wisdom-religion -- but a few unrecognizable shreds.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Religion

“Valuing freedom of thought above all things as the only way of reaching at some future time that Wisdom, of which every Theosophist ought to be enamored, we recognize the right to the same freedom in our foes as in our friends.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

Source: The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Way, Freedom, Time, Future

“It is impossible for any man, when the most favourable circumstances concur, to acquire sufficient knowledge and strength of mind to discharge the duties of a king, entrusted with uncontrolled power; how then must they be violated when his very elevation is an insuperable bar to the attainment of either wisdom or virtue; when all the feelings of a man are stifled by flattery, and reflection shut out by pleasure! Surely it is madness to make the fate of thousands depend on the caprice of a weak fellow creature, whose very station sinks him NECESSARILY below the meanest of his subjects! But one power should not be thrown down to exalt another--for all power intoxicates weak man; and its abuse proves, that the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 1

Men, Fate, Happiness, Pleasure

“It is one of our Theosophical duties to show men the way to wisdom, to peace, to happiness, to strength, and to spiritual power - the real powers, the powers which are safe and clean and sweet, which make a man lovable, which make him compassionate, which guarantee that power put into his hands will be wielded never for self but always in order to benefit others.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

The Masters and the Path of Occultism (1939)

Men, Happiness, Making love, Peace

“I have often pondered over the roles of knowledge or experience, on the one hand, and imagination or intuition, on the other, in the process of discovery. I believe that there is a certain fundamental conflict between the two, and knowledge, by advocating caution, tends to inhibit the flight of imagination. Therefore, a certain naiveté, unburdened by conventional wisdom, can sometimes be a positive asset.”

Harish-Chandra (1923–1983) Indian American mathematician and physicist (1923–1983)

Harish-Chandra, cited in: Robert Langlands, "Harish-Chandra. 11 October 1923-16 October 1983." http://rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/31/198, in: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society of London, 31 (1985), 199-225.

Imagination, Knowledge

“Was it not the so-called professed authorities in times gone by, as they are today, who criticized and disparaged everything proposed for the betterment of man? The kind of proof demanded was premature and could not in wisdom be given. But time and patience finally vindicated those who brought forth the ideas. Humanity is that much better off today because of them—not because of the skeptics!”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Inside the Spaceships

Idea, Time, Patience

“Now for the first time I fully realized that I was in the presence of a man from space - A HUMAN BEING FROM ANOTHER WORLD! The beauty of his form surpassed anything I had ever seen. And the pleasantness of his face freed me of all thought of my personal self. I felt like a little child in the presence of one with great wisdom and much love, and I became very humble within myself ... for from him was radiating a feeling of infinite understanding and kindness, with supreme humility.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Flying Saucers Have Landed

Love, World, Making love, Beauty

“Because he had seen much of life, his last and greatest work, The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, is more than a collection of facts: it is a book of wisdom and experience, a treatise on the conduct of life, a commentary on human destiny.”

Walter Raleigh (professor) (1861–1922) British academic

p. 26 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b325850;view=1up;seq=32 Six Essays on Johnson (1910)

Life, Books

“Challenging the conventional wisdom is the way to make waves in science.”

James E. Lovelock (1919) independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist

[James Lovelock: Challenge the dogma! (Web of Stories), YouTube, 6 August 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA8FbEHsgus]

Making love, Way, Science

“Education is central to advancement—of the country, of the individual. But the ulema have fought hard and long against what most today would consider education. For them religious education must take priority over modern, technical education. Only those subjects are to be studied, only that knowledge is to be imparted which strengthens one’s faith— in practical terms, only those subjects are to be studied, only that knowledge pursued which confirms one in the belief that whatever is written in the Quran and Hadis, whatever has been put out by the ulema over the centuries is true and the acme of wisdom as well as perfection. The education of women, in particular their being awakened to new values, their being trained for new professions, their being awakened to their rights—all this is anathema; it is held to be injurious to them, in fact it is declared to be the way to disrupting society and undermining Islam.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

The World of Fatwas (Or The Shariah In Action)

Women, Education, Faith, Way

“The Gita tells us that there are four kinds of people who take to God-life. Of them ,the afflicted (arta) are the very first ones. The rest in their order are the seekers of knowledge, the seekerse of truth as it is, and the seekers of wisdom.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Source: Meditations. Yogas, Gods, Religions (2000), p.180

Life, God, People, Truth

“We have men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Armistice Day speech (11 November 1948), published in Omar Bradley's Collected Writings, Volume 1 (1967)

Men, God, War, World

“Indeed, this wisdom-religion was delivered to the first thinking human beings on this earth by highly-intelligent spiritual entities from superior spheres; and it has been passed down from guardians to guardians thereof until our own time. Furthermore, portions of this original and majestic system have been given out from time to time to various races in different parts of the world by those guardians when humanity stood in need of some new extension and cyclical renewal of spiritual verities.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 1

World, Religion, Intelligence, Thinking

“You cannot express universal powers, you cannot manifest the divinity within you (because that divinity is entirely impersonal) if your mind and heart are restricted and imprisoned by your personal desires. You must expand your nature and open it in order to let the sunlight of the spirit stream in to you. Therefore self-forgetfulness and impersonality mean the gaining of wisdom and great and holy power.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Story of Jesus (1938), Chapter 3

Nature, Universe, Heart, Personality

“Jesus the Syrian Avatara did not teach anything new. What he did was to point once again to the old, old Pathway to the spiritual life: the Pathway to wisdom and spiritual power. And he told his followers how and what they might achieve by following this Pathway, so that ultimately they could become such as he was - such as he was so far as wisdom and power went; for in the heart of the heart of every human being there is a divinity, his own inner god, which the Christians of a mystical turn of mind today call the immanent Christ.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Story of Jesus (1938), Chapter 3

Life, God, Heart, Christ

“It is not important to teach all that you know, teach what people need to know, and what they are ready to receive. Guide them so they improve their lives, become stronger, increase their capacities, gain deeper insight, and progressively become worthy to receive and appreciate higher wisdom. Be a constant traveller. Wherever you go, find out what people are missing and how it can be provided. In all things remember harmlessness..”

Govinda Bhagavatpada Indian philosopher advaita vendatna

The Himalayan Masters: A Living Tradition (2002)

People, Travel

“Religions remain what they are. Zen is meditation. Meditation is the foundation of every religion. People today feel an intense need to go back to the source of religious life, to the pure essence in the depths of themselves which they can discover only through actually experiencing it. They also need to be able to concentrate their minds in order to find the highest wisdom and freedom, which is spiritual in nature, in their efforts to deal with the influences of every description imposed upon them by their environment. Human wisdom alone is not enough, it is not complete. Only universal truth can provide the highest wisdom. Take away the word Zen and put Truth or Order of the Universe in its place.”

Taisen Deshimaru (1914–1982) Japanese Buddhist monk

Online interview "Questions to Master Deshimaru" at zen-deshimaru.com https://web.archive.org/web/20111008034614/http://www.zen-deshimaru.com/EN/sangha/deshimaru/q-r/0101.htm

Life, People, Truth, Religion

“Art can be a spiritual practice. Not all artists consider this to be true for them, but with the proper motivation and focus, it can be. A spiritual practice is an activity that enables you to develop the qualities of mental clarity, mindfulness of the moment, wisdom, compassion and access to revelations of higher mystic states of awareness. A contemplative method, such as yoga or meditation, will stabilize and assist in the progress of spiritual awareness. An artist’s craft can become a contemplative method, and the creations may provide outward signs of an inner spiritual journey.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

High Times interview (2002)

Art, Motivation

“People understand that elders listen respectfully to everyone. There’s a place at their table for every person. But they know, too, that the elders have consistently been the best people to make important decisions. People are, therefore, comfortable deferring. Their dignity is not compromised, nor do they feel powerless or demeaned, because they are carrying out the decisions of the elders. They know the elders embody the wisdom of their ancestors, that without them they would never have gotten this far…”

Barry Lopez (1945) American writer

On the role of elders in certain societies in “The Goal Now Has to Be to Listen: An Interview with Barry Lopez” https://www.thegeorgiareview.com/posts/the-goal-now-has-to-be-to-listen-an-interview-with-barry-lopez/ in The Georgia Review (2019 Feb 15)

People, Making love, Feeling, Understanding

“Therefore, you should be revulsed by such a body. You should despair of it and should arouse your admiration for the body of the Tathagata. Friends, the body of a Tathagata is the body of Dharma, born of gnosis. The body of a Tathagata is born of the stores of merit and wisdom. It is born of morality, of meditation, of wisdom, of the liberations, and of the knowledge and vision of liberation. It is born of love, compassion, joy, and impartiality. It is born of charity, discipline, and self-control. It is born of the path of ten virtues. It is born of patience and gentleness. It is born of the roots of virtue planted by solid efforts. It is born of the concentrations, the liberations, the meditations, and the absorptions. It is born of learning, wisdom, and liberative technique. It is born of the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment. It is born of mental quiescence and transcendental analysis. It is born of the ten powers, the four fearlessnesses, and the eighteen special qualities. It is born of all the transcendences. It is born from sciences and superknowledges. It is born of the abandonment of all evil qualities, and of the collection of all good qualities. It is born of truth. It is born of reality. It is born of conscious awareness. Friends, the body of a Tathagata is born of innumerable good works. Toward such a body you should turn your aspirations, and, in order to eliminate the sicknesses of the passions of all living beings, you should conceive the spirit of unexcelled, perfect enlightenment.”

Vimalakirti

Chapter 2 http://www.fodian.net/world/0475_02.html Vimalakirti Sutra, Robert Thurman's translation, 1991

Love, Truth, Making love, Knowledge

“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.”

Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) Scottish author

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. XI : Self-Culture — Facilities and Difficulties

Failure, Learning, Success, Success

“What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand. I am profoundly aware of the magnitude of the universe, that all is ruled by law, including my finite person. I believe in the infinite wisdom that envelops and embraces me and from which I take direction, purpose, strength.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Essay in This I Believe : 2 (1952) edited by Edward R. Murrow, p. 142

Life, Faith, Religion, Law

“We talk a great deal about patriotism. What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility which will enable America to remain master of her power — to walk with it in serenity and wisdom, with self-respect and the respect of all mankind; a patriotism that puts country ahead of self; a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. The dedication of a lifetime — these are words that are easy to utter, but this is a mighty assignment. For it is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech to the American Legion convention, New York City (27 August 1952); as quoted in "Democratic Candidate Adlai Stevenson Defines the Nature of Patriotism" in Lend Me Your Ears : Great Speeches In History (2004) by William Safire, p. 79 - 80

Sense, Time, Fight, Self-confidence

“It is my tamanna (deep desire) to do something for our society; I am inspired by the desire to live and die for my country; ...I want the glory of Gujarat to reach the whole world. ...I’ve used the mantra of lokprem (love for people) through Lok Kalyan Melas organised by the government to make the administrative machinery an instrument of lokseva (service of the people). ... To the baseless propaganda of the Congress, I have only this to say: Oh lord! Please give wisdom to those indulging in evil propaganda and give strength to those who live by good and good pure thoughts.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

February 20, 2002 The Sanjh Times quoted in Madhu Purnima Kishwar: Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, Manushi Publications, Delhi 2014.
2002

Love, People, World, Making love

“What the Judgment of Solomon exemplifies is that wisdom trumps science and technology: Regardless of who the biological mother was—based on DNA test results, King Solomon recognized that the best mother would be the caring woman. Imagine an AI judge who is as wise as King Solomon!”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Imagination, Science

“On the one hand this catastrophe had brought to light the utterly corrupt and pernicious character of the ruling oligarchy, their incapacity, their coterie-policy, their leanings towards the Romans. On the other hand the seizure of Sardinia, and the threatening attitude which Rome on that occasion assumed, showed plainly even to the humblest that a declaration of war by Rome was constantly hanging like the sword of Damocles over Carthage, and that, if Carthage in her present circumstances went to war with Rome, the consequence must necessarily be the downfall of the Phoenician dominion in Libya. Probably there were in Carthage not a few who, despairing of the future of their country, counselled emigration to the islands of the Atlantic; who could blame them? But minds of the nobler order disdain to save themselves apart from their nation, and great natures enjoy the privilege of deriving enthusiasm from circumstances in which the multitude of good men despair. They accepted the new conditions just as Rome dictated them; no course was left but to submit and, adding fresh bitterness to their former hatred, carefully to cherish and husband resentment—that last resource of an injured nation. They then took steps towards a political reform.(1) They had become sufficiently convinced of the incorrigibleness of the party in power: the fact that the governing lords had even in the last war neither forgotten their spite nor learned greater wisdom, was shown by the effrontery bordering on simplicity with which they now instituted proceedings against Hamilcar as the originator of the mercenary war, because he had without full powers from the government made promises of money to his Sicilian soldiers. Had the club of officers and popular leaders desired to overthrow this rotten and wretched government, it would hardly have encountered much difficulty in Carthage itself; but it would have met with more formidable obstacles in Rome, with which the chiefs of the government in Carthage already maintained relations that bordered on treason. To all the other difficulties of the position there fell to be added the circumstance, that the means of saving their country had to be created without allowing either the Romans, or their own government with its Roman leanings, to become rightly aware of what was doing.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome - Volume 2

Men, Money, War, Nature

“The warmth of zeal is not perhaps the most dangerous rock that we have to avoid; but rather that languour which ease produces and a distrust of our own courage. Therefore continually wind up the sacred spring of republican government, instead of letting it run down. I need not say that I am not here justifying any excess. Principles the most sacred may be abused: the wisdom of government should guide its operations according to circumstances, it should time its measures, choose its means; for the manner of bringing about great things is an essential part of the talent of producing them, just as wisdom is an essential attribute of virtue....”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Principles to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Republic (February 1794)

Spring, Courage, Time, Parting

“For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.”

Aristotle book Metaphysics

Metaphysics by Aristotle – Book 1, ClassicalWisdom.com
The second sentence is in Metaphysics A 2, 928b 17–20, Aristotle: Metaphysics Beta: Symposium Aristotelicum, Michel Crubellier & Andre´ Laks, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 4.
Metaphysics
Variant: [And] one who experiences a difficulty and who feels wonder thinks that he does not understand..., so that, if it is to escape ignorance that they have practised philosophy, then it is clearly for the sake of knowing, and not for any practical purpose, that they have pursued understanding.

Men, Star, Lovers, Thinking

“Now let us regard the idea of God from the magic standpoint, according to the four elements,the so-called tetragrammaton, the unspeakable, the supreme: the fiery principle involves the almightiness and the omnipotence, the airy principle owns the wisdom, purity and clarity, from which aspect proceeds the universal lawfulness. Love and eternal life are attributed to the watery principle, and omnipresence, immortality and consequently eternity belong to the earth principle. These four aspects together represent the supreme Godhead. Let us tread upon this path to this supreme Godhead practically and step by step, beginning from the lowest sphere, to arrive at the true realization of God in ourselves. Let us praise the happy man who will reach this still in his earthly existence. Us banish fear of the pains, for all of us will reach this goal.”

Franz Bardon book Initiation Into Hermetics

Source: Initiation Into Hermetics (1956), p. 28

Love, Life, God, Pain

“There have been many complaints of people interested in the occult sciences that they had never got any chance at all to be initiated by a personal master or leader (guru). Therefore only people endowed with exceptional faculties, a poor preferred minority seemed to be able to gain this sublime knowledge. Thus a great many of serious seekers of the truth had to go through piles of books just to catch one pearl of it now and again. The one, however, who is earnestly interested in his progress and does not pursue this sacred wisdom from sheer curiosity or else is yearning to satisfy his own lust, will find the right leader to initiate him in this book. No incarnate adept, however high his rank may be, can give the disciple more for his start than the present book does. If both the honest trainee and the attentive reader will find in this book all they have been searching for in vain all the years, then the book has fulfilled its purpose completely.”

Franz Bardon book Initiation Into Hermetics

Introduction p. 8.
Initiation Into Hermetics (1956)

People, Truth, Books, Search

“The general notions about human understanding... which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

Quoted from F. Capra, The Tao of Physics.

History, Understanding, Nature

“About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people -- a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)

Men, Friendship, War, People

“Well may we be dazed by the horrific metamorphosis. Dark days are upon us. The pendulum of civilization trembles, as if to swing back to the inglorious twilight of the past. Imperialistic tendencies are laying their damning clutches on the unsuspecting form of the republic. Fearful questions confront us. Whether we are to be compelled henceforth to read with downcast gaze the matchless axioms of Jefferson and to mumble in confusion the heroic history of our dead—whether the Fourth of July is to be henceforth a day of embarrassment and shame instead of, as hitherto, an occasion for spontaneous and boundless pride—whether Yorktown and Monmouth are to become events which, instead of inspiring a continent to eulogy and song, shall provoke no higher eloquence than that which gutturals from the limping lips of apology—whether the political wisdom of the founders of the republic, gleaned in terrible hours, by anxious eyes, from the travail of ages past, shall be swept away by the heartless levity of upstart statesmen—whether, in short, we shall turn our backs inexorably upon the past—a past glorious achievement and unrivaled in precept—and become the wretched exemplars of a policy, ruinous to ourselves and to our children, repulsive to every truly civilized mind and destructive of the fairest hopes of humanity—these.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

are questions that assail with relentless emphasis the consciences of a great people.
"America's Apostasy", Chicago Chronicle, 6 Mar. 1899

Children, Age, Fear, Hope

“Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world. Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter , “” (pp. 15-16)

World, Courage, Question, Sense

“In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, the Realists had a good deal of reason. General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living. Our proclivity to details cannot quite degrade our life, and divest it of poetry. The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale, yet he is saturated with the laws of the world. His measures are the hours; morning and night, solstice and equinox, geometry, astronomy, and all the lovely accidents of nature play through his mind. Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses. Property keeps the accounts of the world, and is always moral. The property will be found where the labor, the wisdom, and the virtue have been in nations, in classes, and (the whole life-time considered, with the compensations) in the individual also. How wise the world appears, when the laws and usages of nations are largely detailed, and the completeness of the municipal system is considered! Nothing is left out.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist

Love, Life, Money, God

“It is scarcely possible to calculate the benefits which we might derive from the diffusion of European civilisation among the vast population of the East. It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better for us that the people of India were well governed and independent of us, than ill governed and subject to us; that they were ruled by their own kings, but wearing our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery, than that they were performing their salams to English collectors and English magistrates, but were too ignorant to value, or too poor to buy, English manufactures. To trade with civilised men is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages. That would, indeed, be a doting wisdom, which, in order that India might remain a dependency, would make it an useless and costly dependency, which would keep a hundred millions of men from being our customers in order that they might continue to be our slaves.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

"From his Speech in Parliament on the Government of India Bill, 10 July 1833. Quoted from Koenraad Elst, The Argumentative Hindu (2012) Chapter 3

Men, People, Making love, Dependency

“I am in favour of courage—who is ever not in the abstract?—but not of treating it as a substitute for wisdom, as I fear we are currently in danger of doing.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/2002/sep/24/iraq-1#column_894 in the House of Lords (24 September 2002) shortly before the Iraq War 2000s

Fear, Courage

“Undoubtedly, looking back, we nearly all allowed ourselves, for decades, to be frozen into rates of personal taxation which were ludicrously high…That frozen framework has been decisively cracked, not only by the prescripts of Chancellors but in the expectations of the people. It is one of the things for which the Government deserve credit…However, even beneficial revolutions have a strong tendency to breed their own excesses. There is now a real danger of the conventional wisdom about taxation, public expenditure and the duty of the state in relation to the distribution of rewards, swinging much too far in the opposite direction…I put in a strong reservation against the view, gaining ground a little dangerously I think, that the supreme duty of statesmanship is to reduce taxation.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1988/feb/24/opportunity-and-income-social-disparities in the House of Lords (24 February 1988) 1980s

People, Thinking, Decision, Strong

“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.... Certainly it would be difficult to imagine any committee of relatively young men, of thirty or thirty-five, showing the unbroken childishness, ignorance and lack of humor of the Supreme Court of the United States. The average age of the learned justices must be well beyond sixty, and all of them are supposed to be of finished and mellowed sagacity. Yet their knowledge of the most ordinary principles of justice often turns out to be extremely meager, and when they spread themselves grandly upon a great case their reasoning powers are usually found to be precisely equal to those of a respectable Pullman conductor.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"Advice to Young Men" in Prejudices: Third Series (1922).
1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922)

Men, Age, Justice, Imagination

“It is wisdom about God for those who believe that he is all things and in all, and wisdom about nature for the man who accepts the statement found in the Christian Bible that God cannot be measured or discovered, and that darkness is around his pavilion.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge (1893), Chapter 1, Theosophy and the Masters

God, Nature

“The handbills announce me as the President of the Theosophical Society, and you gathered here to learn what Theosophy is and what are its relations with Spiritualism. Let me say then, that in the sense given to it by those who first used it, the word means divine wisdom, or the knowledge of divine wisdom, or the knowledge of divine things… Essentially, a Theosophical Society is one which favours man’s original acquisition of knowledge about the hidden things of the universe by the education and perfecting of his own latent powers.”

Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) Union United States Army officer

Spiritualism and Theosophy (1880)

Education, Knowledge, Sense, Learning

“There are fewer potential adepts in an epoch than the superficial imagine. The fate of those who tread this dizzy precipice of wisdom with weak and faltering steps may be readily inferred. What happens to the dizzy-brained and slippery-footed alpine climber? His brain turns, and he falls headlong into the chasm, with a last shriek and a clutching at the air.”

Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) Union United States Army officer

The Source and Value of the "Mysteries" (1888)

Fate, Imagination

“The Great Approach: New Light and Life for Humanity is about the coming into the world of the Masters of Wisdom, with Their leader Maitreya, the Christ, as World Teacher; and about the implications for humanity, as well as for the Masters Themselves, of this great event. The book is divided into three independent but related parts. It includes articles from my Master, my own edited talks, and a very wide range of questions and answers arising from these talks.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Great Approach (2001)

Life, Books, World, Question

“When the world stock markets collapse — as soon as it is obvious that they are on their final plunge — Maitreya will emerge. He will take up an invitation to appear on a major television network in the United States. The invitation has already been issued, but Maitreya will determine the timing of the interview. After the initial interview, all the networks will want to interview Him. However, He will not be introduced as Maitreya or the Christ, but simply as a man of extraordinary wisdom and love.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Awakening of Humanity (2008)

Love, World, Making love, Appearance

“It is for you, Citizen Directors, to remove from over our heads the storm that the eternal enemies of our liberty are preparing in the shades of silence. It is for you to enlighten the Legislature, it is for you to prevent the enemies of the present system from spreading themselves on our unfortunate shores to sully them with new crimes. Do not allow our brothers, our friends, to be sacrificed to men who wish to reign over the ruins of the human species. But no, your wisdom will enable you to avoid the dangerous snares which our common enemies hold our for you.”

Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803) Leader of the Haitian Revolution

Letter to the French Directory, November 1792

Men, Silence

“We are a capitalist party. We believe in capitalism. When we look at the astonishing material achievements of the West, at our own high and rising physical standard of living, we see these things as the result, not of compulsion or government action or the superior wisdom of a few, but of that system of competition and free enterprise, rewarding success and penalising failure, which enables every individual to participate by his private decisions in shaping the future of his society.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Bromsgrove (6 July 1963), quoted in A Nation Not Afraid. The Thinking of Enoch Powell (B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1965), p. 25
1960s

Failure, Decision, Success, Future

“In the future, the eyes of humanity will be fixed upon the Christ, and not upon any such man-made institutions as the Church and its dignitaries; Christ will be seen as He is in reality, working through His disciples, through the Masters of the Wisdom, and through His followers who toil unseen (and usually unrecognised) behind world affairs. The sphere of His activity will be known to be the human heart and also the crowded market places of the world, but not some stone edifice, and not the pomp and ceremony of any ecclesiastical headquarters.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Reappearance of the Christ (1948), Chapter IV:

World, Reality, Future, Heart

“My work is to teach and spread the knowledge of the Ageless Wisdom wherever I can find a response, and I have been doing this for many years… In all the above, I have told you much; yet at the same time I have told you nothing which would lead you to offer me that blind obedience and the foolish devotion which the emotional aspirant offers to the Guru and Master Whom he is as yet unable to contact. Nor will he make that desired contact until he has transmuted emotional devotion into unselfish service to humanity--not to the Master.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Extract from a Statement by the Tibetan

Making love, Knowledge, Time

“The mentorship of elders is what got me here. In Latinx + Indigenous communities, elder is an honorific that doesn’t come with age - it comes w/ univ acknowledgement of wisdom. But to delay large action on climate doesn’t include the wisdom of elders nor the urgency of youth.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018/status/1076909133255852032 (23 December 2018) Twitter Quotes (2018)

Youth, Age, Communication

“Are chiefly cherished in Provinces far from Capitals. They are the standing Wisdom of a Country, though frequently Preposterous on a first view of them.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Customs, p. 62
Table talk

Country

“That it was common to observe that this was an enlightened Age; but he had thought it for a long time past an ignorant Age. Would you, said he, call a Circulating Library a good Library, because it contains so many books? This Age is much advanced in many useless sciences, & much more respect is shewn to Talent than to wisdom; but I consider our fore-fathers as deeper Thinkers than ourselves, because they set an higher Value on good sense than Knowledge in various Sciences, & this good sense was derived very often from as much study & more knowledge, though of another sort.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Present Age, p. 49
Table talk

Books, Age, Knowledge, Sense

“The Revolution and Hanover succession had been objects of the highest veneration to the old Whigs. They thought them not only proofs of the sober and steady spirit of liberty which guided their ancestors; but of their wisdom and provident care of posterity.—The modern Whigs have quite other notions of these events and actions. They do not deny that Mr. Burke has given truly the words of the acts of parliament which secured the succession, and the just sense of them. They attack not him but the law.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 436

Law, Sense, Success

“The Christ within who is our hope of glory is not a matter of theological debate or philosophical speculation. He is not a hobby, a part-time project, a good theme for a book, or a last resort when all human effort fails. He is our life, the most real fact about us. He is the power and wisdom of God dwelling within us.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: 1990s, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging (1994), p. 130

Life, God, Books, Hope

“Why then do you occupy me with the words rather than with the works of wisdom? Make me braver, make me calmer, make me the equal of Fortune, make me her superior.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CXVI: On Real Ethics as Superior to Syllogistic Subtleties

Making love

“There is no reason why poverty should call us away from philosophy—no, nor even actual want. For when hastening after wisdom, we must endure even hunger. Men have endured hunger when their towns were besieged, and what other reward for their endurance did they obtain than that they did not fall under the conqueror’s power? How much greater is the promise of the prize of everlasting liberty, and the assurance that we need fear neither God nor man! Even though we starve, we must reach that goal.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XVII: On Philosophy and Riches

Men, Hunger, God, Fear

“The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)

Truth, Justice

“As the origin and basis of all religions, it cannot be the antagonist of any: it is indeed their purifier, revealing the valuable inner meaning of much that has become mischievous in its external presentation by the perverseness of ignorance and the accretions of superstition; but it recognises and defends itself in each, and seeks in each to unveil its hidden wisdom.”

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

The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

Religion

“The sacred books of the East are the best evidence for the greatness of their authors, for who in later days or in modern times can even approach the spiritual sublimity of their religious thought, the intellectual splendour of their philosophy, the breadth and purity of their ethic? And when we find that these books contain teachings about God, man, and the universe identical in substance under much variety of outer appearance, it does not seem unreasonable to refer to them to a central primary body of doctrine. To that body we give the name Divine Wisdom, in its Greek form: THEOSOPHY.”

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

Source: The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

God, Books, Universe, Appearance

“Right thought is necessary to right conduct, right understanding to right living, and the Divine Wisdom – whether called by its ancient Sanskrit name of Brahma Vidyā, or its modern Greek name of Theosophia, Theosophy – comes to the world as at once an adequate philosophy and an all-embracing religion and ethic. It was once said of the Christian Scriptures by a devotee that they contained shallows in which a child could wade and depths in which a giant must swim. A similar statement might be made of Theosophy, for some of its teachings are so simple and so practical that any person of average intelligence can understand and follow them, while others are so lofty, so profound, that the ablest strains his intellect to contain them and sinks exhausted in the effort.”

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

The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

World, Religion, Intelligence, Understanding

“Let us not believe that it is enough to read without unction, to speculate without devotion, to investigate without wonder, to observe without joy, to act without godly zeal, to know without love, to understand without humility, to strive without divine grace, or to reflect as a mirror without divinely inspired wisdom.”

Bonaventure (1221–1274) franciscan, bishop, cardinal, Doctor of the Church, catholic saint

The Journey of the Mind to God

Love, Making love, Understanding, Reading

“We of the Occident are about to arrive at a crossroads that was reached by the thinkers of India some seven hundred years before Christ. This is the real reason, why we become both vexed and stimulated, uneasy and yet interested, when confronted with the concepts and images of Oriental wisdom.”

Heinrich Robert Zimmer (1890–1943) German historian

Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.

Christ

“Few men have had their elasticity so thoroughly put to the proof as Caesar-- the sole creative genius produced by Rome, and the last produced by the ancient world, which accordingly moved on in the path that he marked out for it until its sun went down. Sprung from one of the oldest noble families of Latium--which traced back its lineage to the heroes of the Iliad and the kings of Rome, and in fact to the Venus-Aphrodite common to both nations--he spent the years of his boyhood and early manhood as the genteel youth of that epoch were wont to spend them. He had tasted the sweetness as well as the bitterness of the cup of fashionable life, had recited and declaimed, had practised literature and made verses in his idle hours, had prosecuted love-intrigues of every sort, and got himself initiated into all the mysteries of shaving, curls, and ruffles pertaining to the toilette-wisdom of the day, as well as into the still more mysterious art of always borrowing and never paying. But the flexible steel of that nature was proof against even these dissipated and flighty courses; Caesar retained both his bodily vigour and his elasticity of mind and of heart unimpaired. In fencing and in riding he was a match for any of his soldiers, and his swimming saved his life at Alexandria; the incredible rapidity of his journeys, which usually for the sake of gaining time were performed by night--a thorough contrast to the procession-like slowness with which Pompeius moved from one place to another-- was the astonishment of his contemporaries and not the least among the causes of his success. The mind was like the body. His remarkable power of intuition revealed itself in the precision and practicability of all his arrangements, even where he gave orders without having seen with his own eyes. His memory was matchless, and it was easy for him to carry on several occupations simultaneously with equal self-possession. Although a gentleman, a man of genius, and a monarch, he had still a heart. So long as he lived, he cherished the purest veneration for his worthy mother Aurelia (his father having died early); to his wives and above all to his daughter Julia he devoted an honourable affection, which was not without reflex influence even on political affairs. With the ablest and most excellent men of his time, of high and of humbler rank, he maintained noble relations of mutual fidelity, with each after his kind. As he himself never abandoned any of his partisans after the pusillanimous and unfeeling manner of Pompeius, but adhered to his friends--and that not merely from calculation--through good and bad times without wavering, several of these, such as Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Matius, gave, even after his death, noble testimonies of their attachment to him.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol.4. Part 2.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Love, Life, Death, Men

“He was passionate and thought he was wise; I was a fool and suspected it; I was nearer to wisdom.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Il était passionné et se croyait sage; j'étais folle, mais je m'en doutais, et, sous ce point de vue, j'étais plus près que lui de la Sagesse.
Maximes et Pensées, #562
Maxims and Considerations

Fools, Passion

“Indeed, wisdom is born of meditation; without meditation wisdom is lost. Knowing this twofold path of gain and loss of wisdom, one should conduct oneself so that wisdom may increase.”

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

Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), Dhammapada, Ch. 20, Verse 282

Loss

“His tenure as President was a period of unparelled political turmoil and saw him swear in three governments led by Morarji Desai, Charan Singh and Indira Gandhi. He took historic decisions on a number of important issues. By virtue of his long years in public life and close association with leaders from all sections of opinion, he was able to be a steady hand at the wheel of state. His wisdom, friendliness and accessibility endeared him to people belonging to all walks of life. He lent distinction to the highest office of the land by his idealism and patriotism.”

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (1913–1996) sixth President of India

Speech by the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee at the concluding function of the centenary celebrations of the former President of India, Dr. Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy

Life, People, Decision

“The Maharaja was not only a great scholar but also liked the company of scholars and to listen to their words of wisdom and knowledge. He used to arrange study circles regularly in a serene place in the City.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

A.V. Narasimha Murthy, in "When the Maharaja’s son failed an examination".

Knowledge, Study

“Rukmini of glorious past will be guru Agastya’s messenger to the women and young ones in India taking up for a large part of the work there that I have been carrying on for years. Young in body, yet she is old in wisdom and power. Child of the indomitable will is her welcome in the higher world.”

Rukmini Devi Arundale (1904–1986) Indian Bharatnatyam dancer

Theosophist Annie Besant in "Rukmini Devi Arundale, 1904-1986: A Visionary Architect of Indian Culture and the Performing Arts", page=10
About Rukmini Devi

Women, World, Past, Parting

“If it was possible for men who exercise their reason, to believe that the divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these Colonies might at least require from the Parliament of Great Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them has been granted to that body.”

John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician

But a reverence for our great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that Government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end.
Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (6 July 1775)

Men, Exercises, Parting

“But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives. Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn’t it?”

Alexander McCall Smith (1948) British writer

and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever.
Love Over Scotland, chapter 96.
The 44 Scotland Street series

Making love, Time

“When the history of his time is written he will stand forth as the great figure in the years which have been so crowded with events. He gained the entire confidence of the nation by his patriotism, wisdom and ability, just as he won its love by his kindness and goodness to all men.”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. The Authentic Life of President McKinley, page 413.

Love, Men, Making love, Confidence

“Loving does not necessarily mean liking. But it still is loving, yes — totally, completely, utterly. Take the key of wisdom and unlock your own heart. Then let people in one by one. Listen to them, with full attention, with all your mind, heart, body and soul, unto exhaustion. And look!”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

the exhaustion will be lifted, and you will be able to listen still more. Yes, love must be communicated person to person; otherwise it will not be effective.
Molchanie (1982)

Love, People, Making love, Soul

“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...”

Evelyn Waugh book Black Mischief

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."
First lines
Black Mischief (1932)

Life, God, People, Art

“Abstract cleverness of the mind only separates the thinker from the world of reality, and that world, the Forest of Real Life, is in a desperate condition now because of too many who think too much and care too little. In spite of what many minds have thought themselves into believing, that mistake cannot continue for much longer if everything is going to survive. The one chance we have to avoid certain disaster is to change our approach, and learn to value wisdom and contentment. These are things that are being searched for anyway, through Knowledge and Cleverness, but they do not come from Knowledge and Cleverness. They never have, and they never will. We can no longer afford to look so desperately hard for something in the wrong way and in the wrong place. If Knowledge and Cleverness are allowed to go on wrecking things, they will before much longer destroy all life on this earth as we know it, and what little may temporarily survive will not be worth looking at, even if it were possible for us to do so.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

The Now of Pooh.
The Tao of Pooh (1982)

Life, World, Way, Search

“It is not to be supposed that she was, or that any one, at the age at which I first saw her, could be, all that she afterwards became. Least of all could this be true of her, with whom self-improvement, progress in the highest and in all senses, was a law of her nature; a necessity equally from the ardour with which she sought it, and from the spontaneous tendency of faculties which could not receive an impression or an experience without making it the source or the occasion of an accession of wisdom. Up to the time when I first saw her, her rich and powerful nature had chiefly unfolded itself according to the received type of feminine genius. To her outer circle she was a beauty and a wit, with an air of natural distinction, felt by all who approached her: to the inner, a woman of deep and strong feeling, of penetrating and intuitive intelligence, and of an eminently meditative and poetic nature.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/185/mode/1up p. 185

Age, Making love, Law, Beauty

“The future is built on the rubble of the past; wisdom lies in facing that fact, not in fighting against it.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Road to the Sea

The Road to the Sea, p. 265
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Past, Future, Fight

“Certain it is, that any supposed obstructions, concerning the quality or temperature of any or every one of those worlds, could not have been any bar in the way of God Almighty, with regard to his replenishing his universal creation with moral agents. The unlimited perfection of God could perfectly well adapt every part of his creation to the design of whatever rank or species of constituted beings, his Godlike wisdom and goodness saw fit to impart existence to; so that as there is no deficiency of absolute perfection in God, it is rationally demonstrative that the immense creation is replenished with rational agents, and that it has been eternally so, and that the display of divine goodness must have been as perfect and complete, in the antecedent, as it is possible to be in the subsequent eternity.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. II Section III - Of The Eternity and Infinitude of Divine Providence

God, World, Way, Universe

“The idea of a God we infer from our experimental dependence on something superior to ourselves in wisdom, power and goodness, which we call God; our senses discover to us the works of God which we call nature, and which is a manifest demonstration of his invisible essence. Thus it is from the works of nature that we deduce the knowledge of a God, and not because we have, or can have any immediate knowledge of, or revelation from him.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. V Section II - Containing Observations on the Providence and Agency of God, as it Respects the Natural and Moral World, with Strictures on Revelation in General

God, Idea, Nature, Knowledge

“Life is that which can hold a purpose for three thousand years and never yield. The individual fails, but life succeeds. The individual is foolish, but life holds in its blood and seed the wisdom of generations. The individual dies, but life, tireless and undiscourageble, goes on, wondering, longing, planning, trying, mounting, longing.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 5 : On Death

Life

“Wisdom, if it were young, would cherish love, nursing it with devotion, deepening it with sacrifice, vitalizing with parentage, making all things subordinate to it till the end. Even though it consumes us in its service and overwhelms us with tragedy, even though it breaks us down with separations, let it be first. How can it matter what price we pay for love?”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 2 : On Youth

Love, Making love

“Nothing in the history of the United State of America has eroded the protection of our Bill of Rights nearly as much as our government’s War on Drugs… Conventional wisdom says that the only way to stem the tide is to grant law enforcement agencies greater and greater powers and to let them intrude more and more completely into the private lives of our people.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, p. 95

War, People, Law, Way

“The Executive must have the largely unshared duty to determine and preserve the degree of internal security necessary to exercise that power successfully. It is an awesome responsibility requiring judgment and wisdom of a high order. A very first principle of that wisdom would be an insistence upon avoiding secrecy for its own sake. For when everything is classified, then nothing is classified and the system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless and to be manipulated by those intent on self-protection or self-promotion.”

Potter Stewart (1915–1985) American judge

Source: Security Classification Reform Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Goverment Operations of the House of Representatives. Ninetythird Congress. Second Session. 1974

Exercises, Self-confidence

“Pride is not a wise counselor. People who believe themselves to be the incarnation of good have a distorted view of the world. The absence of any obstacle to the deployment of strength is dangerous for the strong themselves: passion takes precedence over reason. "No power without limit can be legitimate," as Montesquieu wrote long ago. Political wisdom does not consist in seeking only immediate victory, nor does it require systematic preference of "us" over "them."”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

Preface to the English edition (October 2002), p. xxi
Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003)

People, World, Strong, Passion

“Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, so there is no place for them in a Being for whom no difficulties exist”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

pages 176-177; Early Modern Texts page 16
Three Essays on Religion (posthumous publication), Theism, Part II: Attributes

“Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations… If you adopt their attitudes, then the possibility won’t exist because you’ll have already shut it out… You can hear other people’s wisdom, but you’ve got to re-evaluate the world for yourself.”

Mae Jemison (1956) American doctor and NASA astronaut

Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students https://www.space.com/17169-mae-jemison-biography.html, November 2009

People, World, Imagination

“Wisdom's first progress is to take a view
What's decent or indecent, false or true.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

Source: Of Prudence (1668), line 1

Falseness

“From a religious perspective, loving one another is the highest commandment. From a spiritual perspective, loving one another is the wisdom of the ages. From a political perspective, loving one another is just the smartest thing to do. Plus, today it’s the only survivable option.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (26 Nov 2019) Williamson's quotes in social media

Love, Age, Making love

“We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship; which shall be better than a den of thieves. Let us not disguise the difficulties; and, above all, let us not content ourselves with nobel aspirations, counsels of perfection, and self-righteous advice to others. We shall need the wisdom of the serpent; we shall have to be content with short steps; we shall be obliged to give and take; we shall face the strongest passions of mankind — our own not the least; and in the end we shall have fabricated an imperfect instrument. But we shall not wholly have failed; we shall have gone forward, if we bring to our task a pure and chastened spirit, patience, understanding, sympathy, forbearance, generosity, fortitude, and, above all, an inflexible determination. The history of man has just begun; in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours. It is worth the trial.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"A Pledge of Allegiance" - speech for "I Am an American Day" Central Park, New York, New York. (20 May 1945) Hand credited H. G. Wells with inspiring some of the ideas expressed in this speech.
Extra-judicial writings

Lie, World, Hope, History

“Wisdom of what herself approves makes choice,
Nor is led captive by the common voice.
Clear-sighted Reason Wisdom's judgment leads,
And Sense, her vassal, in her footsteps treads.
That thou to Truth the perfect way may'st know,
To thee all her specific forms I'll show:
He that the way to honesty will learn,
First what's to be avoided must discern.
Thyself from flatt'ring self-conceit defend,
Nor what thou dost not know to know pretend.
Some secrets deep in abstruse darkness lie:
To search them thou wilt need a piercing eye.
Not rashly therefore to such things assent,
Which, undeceived, thou after may'st repent;
Study and time in these must thee instruct,
And others' old experience may conduct.
Wisdom herself her ear doth often lend
To counsel offer'd by a faithful friend.”