“Our cleverness has grown prodigiously - but not our wisdom.”
in a letter http://www.scribd.com/doc/5062627/Ryle to Professor Carlos Chagas, president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 24 February 1983.
Context: The benefits of medical research are real - but so are the potential horrors of genetic engineering and embryo manipulation. We devise heart transplants, but do little for the 15 million who die annually of malnutrition and related diseases. Our cleverness has grown prodigiously - but not our wisdom.
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Martin Ryle 4
English radio astronomer 1918–1984Related quotes
“Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and wisdom.”
Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
Source: Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973), p. 35.
“Cleverness is not wisdom. And not to think mortal thoughts is to see few days.”
Bacchæ l. 395
Source: The Bacchae
“A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn't really care, wisdom does.”
The Now of Pooh.
Source: The Tao of Pooh (1982)
Context: 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.
“The wisdom of our ancestors.”
Burke is credited by some with the first use of this phrase, in Observations on a Late Publication on Present State of the Nation (1769), p. 516; also in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) and Discussion on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill (1793)
1760s
“The science of probability gives mathematical expression to our ignorance, not to our wisdom.”
Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones (1968)
Context: If everything, everything were known, statistical estimates would be unnecessary. The science of probability gives mathematical expression to our ignorance, not to our wisdom.
“Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.”