Quotes about wisdom and truth

„Never, ever, let anyone tell you what you can and can't do. Prove the cynics wrong. Pity them for they have no imagination. The sky's the limit. Your sky. Your limit. Now. Let's dance.“

— Tom Hiddleston English actor, producer and musical performer 1981

„Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.“

— Ronald Reagan American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989) 1911 - 2004

Speech in Jersey City, New Jersey (1 September 1980) http://www.slate.com/id/2201249/
1980s
Context: Let it show on the record that when the American people cried out for economic help, Jimmy Carter took refuge behind a dictionary. Well, if it's a definition he wants, I'll give him one. A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.

„I honestly don't understand the big fuss made over nudity and sex in films. It's silly. On TV, the children can watch people murdering each other, which is a very unnatural thing, but they can't watch two people in the very natural process of making love. Now, really, that doesn't make any sense, does it?“

— Sharon Tate actress, victim of murder by Charles Manson followers 1943 - 1969

Quoted in Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders (2000), by Greg King

„When I saw that Moses’ version of the Genesis of the world did not fit sufficiently in many ways with Aristotle and the rest of the philosophers, I began to have doubts about the truth of all philosophers and started to investigate the secrets of nature.“

— Gerardus Mercator cartographer, philosopher and mathematician 1512 - 1594

Evangelicæ Historiæ: Quadripartita Monas Sive Harmonia Quatuor Evangelistarum ("Harmonization of the Gospels") (1592), dedicatory letter. Quoted in Jean Van Raemdonck, Gerard Mercator: sa vie et ses oeuvres (1869), p. 25, footnote 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=18NNAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA25

„We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.“

— Andy Goldsworthy British sculptor and photographer 1956

„The desert has its holiness of silence, the crowd its holiness of conversation.“

— Walter Elliot American priest 1842 - 1928

„Without the fear of God, men do not even observe justice and charity among themselves.“

— John Calvin, book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Source: Institutes of the Christian Religion

„True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.“

— John Calvin, book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 1 Chapter 1, p. 44
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)
Context: Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.

„Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain
That has been, and may be again.“

— William Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper

The Solitary Reaper.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

„I used to work at McDonald's making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law.“

— Chris Rock American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director 1965

„There are people who are excitable by nature and allow themselves to become angry for the most trivial of reasons.“

— Kanō Jigorō Japanese educator and judoka 1860 - 1938

Source: Kodokan Judo (1882), p. 23
Context: There are people who are excitable by nature and allow themselves to become angry for the most trivial of reasons. Judo can help such people learn to control themselves. Through training, they quickly realize that anger is a waste of energy, that it has only negative effects on the self and others.

„Everything that is painted directly and on the spot always has strength, a power, and a vivacity of touch one cannot recover in the studio... Three strokes of the brush in front of nature are worth more than two days of work at the easel“

— Eugène Boudin French painter 1824 - 1898

in the studio
Quote from Boudin's sketchbook; as quoted in Boudin at Trouville, by Vivien Hamilton, exh. Catalogue, London John Murray Ltd., 1992, p. 16
undated quotes

„While the others had got married and moved out to suburbia, I had stayed in London and got into the arts scene through friends like Robert Fraser and Barry Miles and papers like The International Times. We opened the Indica gallery with John Dunbar, Peter Asher and people like that. I heard about people like John Cage, and that he’d just performed a piece of music called 4’33” (which is completely silent) during which if someone in the audience coughed he would say, ‘See?’ Or someone would boo and he’d say, ‘See? It’s not silence—it’s music.’ I was intrigued by all of that. So these things started to be part of my life. I was listening to Stockhausen; one piece was all little plink-plonks and interesting ideas. Perhaps our audience wouldn’t mind a bit of change, we thought, and anyway, tough if they do! We only ever followed our own noses—most of the time, anyway. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was one example of developing an idea.“

— Paul McCartney English singer-songwriter and composer 1942

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 212

„Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it’s fear.“

— Paul Beatty, book The Sellout

Source: The Sellout

„[Democritus says:] By convention sweet is sweet, by convention bitter is bitter, by convention hot is hot, by convention cold is cold, by convention color is color. But in reality there are atoms and the void. That is, the objects of sense are supposed to be real and it is customary to regard them as such, but in truth they are not. Only the atoms and the void are real.“

— Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Fragments

„The theatre couldn't match what was going on in a court of law or at football grounds. The theatre has never been able to match what goes on anywhere, that's why so few people go.“

— Tom Baker English actor 1934

„If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.“

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky Russian author 1821 - 1881

Letter To Mme. N. D. Fonvisin (1854), as published in Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends (1914), translated by Ethel Golburn Mayne, Letter XXI, p. 71 
Context: I want to say to you, about myself, that I am a child of this age, a child of unfaith and scepticism, and probably (indeed I know it) shall remain so to the end of my life. How dreadfully has it tormented me (and torments me even now) this longing for faith, which is all the stronger for the proofs I have against it. And yet God gives me sometimes moments of perfect peace; in such moments I love and believe that I am loved; in such moments I have formulated my creed, wherein all is clear and holy to me. This creed is extremely simple; here it is: I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly, and more perfect than the Saviour; I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, but that there could be no one. I would even say more: If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.