Thomas Jefferson
Politician, Founding Father
"Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable for, not the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision"
Oracles quotes
Oracles
38 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Plutarch
Philosopher, Historian
"There are two sentences inscribed upon the Ancient oracle... "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much"; and upon these all other precepts depend."
William Shakespeare
Playwright, Poet
"His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth."
Ted Nelson
Computer Scientist
"So, what you can do in Microsoft Word is what Bill Gates has decided. What you can do in Oracle Database is what Larry Ellison and his crew have decided."
Heraclitus
Philosopher
"The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign"
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside oracles — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Oracles quotes (page 1 of 2)
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"The Delphic Oracle said I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because that I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing."
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"The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles."
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"I am sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips, let no dog bark."
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"Your own reason is the only oracle given to you by God."
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"Not by wisdom do they [poets] make what they compose, but by a gift of nature and an inspiration similar to that of the diviners and the oracles."
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"For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles."
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"The philosophy of waiting is sustained by all the oracles of the universe."
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"Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored To dredge the silt from your throat. I am none the wiser."
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"Man's conscience is the oracle of God."
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"Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine, and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies,omens, oracles, judgments, quite obscure the few natural events, that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every pagewe soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvellous, and that, though this inclination may at intervals receive a check from sense and learning, it can never be thoroughly extirpated."
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"I certainly don't think we [The Elders organization] are oracles but I would hope that over our lifetimes we have accumulated some useful experience and perhaps even a modicum of wisdom! We don't have all the answers."
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"Enlarge not thy destiny, said the oracle: endeavor not to do more than is given thee in charge."
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"The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves."
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"Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science."
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