Wisdom Quotes

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.

Once and for all, there are many things I choose not to know.-Wisdom sets limits even to knowledge.

Beware of spitting against the wind!

The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men-as well as his great moments of grand harmony-a rare accident even in us! A sort of planetary motion.

Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent - that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior.

What is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent.

It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!

Socrates.- If all goes well, the time will come when one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and reason... Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in being able to be serious cheerfully and in possessing that wisdom full of roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul. And he also possessed the finer intellect.

What the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath never its end in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade thee that they are the end of all things: so vain are they.

The Devil has the broadest perspectives for God; therefore, he keeps so far away from God-the Devil being the most ancient friend of wisdom.

The flame is not as bright to itself as it is to those it illuminates: so too the sage.

Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it! To all those be-lauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life. Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honorable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie. Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.

Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.

The God that Paul invented for himself, a God who reduced to absurdity the wisdom of this world (especially the two great enemies of superstition, philology and medicine), is in truth only an indication of Paul's resolute determination to accomplish that very thing himself: to give one's own will the name of God, Torah - that is essentially Jewish.

The extraordinary courage and wisdom of Kant and Schopenhauer have succeeded in gaining the most difficult victory, the victory over the optimism concealed in the essence of logic-an optimism that is the basis of our culture.

One man with a head on his shoulders is worth a dozen without.

Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.

Outsized returns come from betting against conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom is usually right.

Where you are going to spend your time and your energy is one of the most important decisions you get to make in life.