Wise quotes
5.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Looking at where the planet is now, we could screw things up massively or we could wise-up on a species level and actually make things better. If I had to put my money where my mouth is, I think we'll wise up globally but there will still be outbreaks of local stupidity."
"Those instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of all human beings should be produced by the least possible labour of all."
"A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."
"And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe."
"There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge."
"In The 3rd Alternative, Stephen Covey urges us to chart a course beyond the suboptimal solutions to all our crises - beyond left and right, and beyond the many false choices in front of us. The 3rdAlternative is a wise and welcome echo of Einstein's warning that the problems we're facing today cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them."
"It is to our advantage to have securities do nothing price-wise for months, or perhaps years, while we are buying them."
"I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life."
"Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he will be thinking about love til the stars run away and the shadows eaten the moon."
"O Mistress mine, where are you roaming? O, stay and hear; your true love's coming, That can sing both high and low: Trip no further, pretty sweeting; Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know. What is love? 'Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies not plenty; Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure."
"Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise."
"Songwriters might write cynical, world-wise lyrics and constantly talk about money, but most of us are downright naive when it comes to business."
"The wise man does not discriminate; he gathers all the shreds of light, from wherever they may come."
"When I am talking to people who I feel don't like me or are mean, I get really shy, and I kind of curl up personality wise."
"It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents."
"History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by language and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived."
"Will is the measure of power. To a great genius there must be a great will. If the thought is not a lamp to the will, does not proceed to an act, the wise are imbecile. He alone is strong and happy who has a will. The rest are herds. He uses; they are used. He is of the Maker; they are of the Made. Will is always miraculous, being the presence of God to men. When it appears in a man he is a hero, and all metaphysics are at fault."
"Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement."
"At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish."
"The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy."
