“True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being-free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies-and therefore you can find out what religion is.”
Wise feeling
Wise Quotes — page 126 of 916
“Find someone who is willing to share the truth with you.”
“Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.”
“Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed-men, and such as sleep o'nights; Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”
“Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.”
“A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes anothers.”
“I suppose that in no educational institution can one become an educated person.”
“Men have no better guidance than examples and facts proved by experience.”
“When dealing with people, let us remember that we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity. ...Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”
“There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit.”
“Intellectuals tend to be arrogant. Intelligence, like money, is a good servant but a bad master. When practicing pranayama, the yogi [makes] himself humble and without pride in his intellectual attainments.”
“What does learning mean: accumulating knowledge or transforming your life?”
“We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.”
“Learn what you are and be such.”
“For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.”
“The beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken.”
“Those who want their rights respected under the Constitution and the law ought to set the example themselves of observing the Constitution and the law. While there may be those of high intelligence who violate the law at times, the barbarian and the defective always violate it. Those who disregard the rules of society are not exhibiting a superior intelligence, are not promoting freedom and independence, are not following the path of civilization, but are displaying the traits of ignorance, of servitude, of savagery, and treading the way that leads back to the jungle.”
“I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.”
“Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.”
“As our heart summons our strength, our wisdom must direct it.”