„Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.“
— Benjamin Disraeli British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister 1804 - 1881
Quotes about wisdom and truth
Related topics„The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.“
— Benjamin Disraeli British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister 1804 - 1881
„The secret of success is constancy to purpose.“
— Benjamin Disraeli British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister 1804 - 1881
Source: Speech at banquet of the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations, Crystal Palace, London (24 June 1872), cited in "Mr. Disraeli at Sydenham," The Times (25 June 1872), p. 8.
„No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.“
— C.G. Jung Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology 1875 - 1961
„I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.“
— C.G. Jung Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology 1875 - 1961
Variant: I am not what happens to me. I choose who I become.
„To speak falsely is the mark of a slave, but the truth is noble.“
— Apollonius of Tyana Ancient Greek philosopher 15 - 100
to Euphrates, Epp. Apoll. 83
Letters
„When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.“
— Osama bin Laden founder of al-Qaeda 1957 - 2011
Video interview, quoted in Analyzing Leaders, Presidents and Terrorists by Diane E. Holloway page 325 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Jc7CY1yV1g8C&pg=PA325, with NPR transcript https://www.npr.org/news/specials/response/investigation/011213.binladen.transcript.html (9 November 2001)
2000s, 2002
„Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are“
— Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994
Variant: Wanting to be someone else is the waste of who you are
— Augusto Boal Brazilian writer 1931 - 2009
Games for Actors and non-Actors (1992)
Context: In truth the Theatre of the Oppressed has no end, because everything which happens in it must extend into life…. The Theatre of the Oppressed is located precisely on the frontier between fiction and reality – and this border must be crossed. If the show starts in fiction, its objective is to become integrated into reality, into life. Now in 1992, when so many certainties have become so many doubts, when so many dreams have withered on exposure to sunlight, and so many hopes have become as many deceptions – now that we are living through times and situations of great perplexity, full of doubts and uncertainties, now more than ever I believe it is time for a theatre which, at its best, will ask the right questions at the right times. Let us be democratic and ask our audiences to tell us their desires, and let us show them alternatives. Let us hope that one day – please, not too far in the future – we’ll be able to convince or force our governments, our leaders, to do the same; to ask their audiences – us – what they should do, so as to make this world a place to live and be happy in – yes, it is possible – rather than just a vast market in which we sell our goods and our souls. Let’s hope. Let’s work for it!
„Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.“
— Benjamin Disraeli British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister 1804 - 1881
Speech at Aylesbury, Royal and Central Bucks Agricultural Association (21 September 1865), cited in Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Collected from his Writings and Speeches (1881), p. 356
1860s
„When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.“
— Benjamin Disraeli British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister 1804 - 1881
Part 6, Chapter 3
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)
„Action may not always bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.“
— Benjamin Disraeli British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister 1804 - 1881
Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870)
Variant: Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
„If all men by nature desire to know, then they desire most of all the greatest knowledge of science. So the Philosopher argues in chap. 2 of his first book of the work [Metaphisics]. And he immediately indicates what the greatest science is, namely the science which is about those things that are most knowable. But there are two senses in which things are said to be maximally knowable: either [1] because they are the first of all things known and without them nothing else can be known; or [2] because they are what are known most certainly. In either way, however, this science is about the most knowable. Therefore, this most of all is a science and, consequently, most desirable…“
sic: si omnes homines natura scire desiderant, ergo maxime scientiam maxime desiderabunt. Ita arguit Philosophus I huius cap. 2. Et ibidem subdit: "quae sit maxime scientia, illa scilicet quae est circa maxime scibilia". Maxime autem dicuntur scibilia dupliciter: uel quia primo omnium sciuntur sine quibus non possunt alia sciri; uel quia sunt certissima cognoscibilia. Utroque autem modo considerat ista scientia maxime scibilia. Haec igitur est maxime scientia, et per consequens maxime desiderabilis.
— Duns Scotus Scottish Franciscan friar, philosopher and Catholic blessed 1265 - 1308
sic: si omnes homines natura scire desiderant, ergo maxime scientiam maxime desiderabunt. Ita arguit Philosophus I huius cap. 2. Et ibidem subdit: "quae sit maxime scientia, illa scilicet quae est circa maxime scibilia".
Maxime autem dicuntur scibilia dupliciter: uel quia primo omnium sciuntur sine quibus non possunt alia sciri; uel quia sunt certissima cognoscibilia. Utroque autem modo considerat ista scientia maxime scibilia. Haec igitur est maxime scientia, et per consequens maxime desiderabilis.
Quaestiones subtilissimae de metaphysicam Aristotelis, as translated in: William A. Frank, Allan Bernard Wolter (1995) Duns Scotus, metaphysician. p. 18-19
„When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.“
— Abraham Lincoln 16th President of the United States 1809 - 1865
„The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.“
— Winston S. Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1874 - 1965
— Billie Eilish American singer-songwriter 2001
Source: "Happier Than Ever" · Official video at YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GJWxDKyk3A · Performance on Saturday Night Live (12 December 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPfW6mGx1SA
„Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.“
— Albert Einstein German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity 1879 - 1955
Letter to Jost Winteler (1901), quoted in The Private Lives of Albert Einstein by Roger Highfield and Paul Carter (1993), p. 79 http://books.google.com/books?id=zY7FE9ZyDO0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA79#v=onepage&q&f=false. Einstein had been annoyed that Paul Drude, editor of Annalen der Physik, had dismissed out of hand some criticisms Einstein made of Drude's electron theory of metals.
1900s
Variant: A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.
