"Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves."
Wisest Man quotes
37 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky."
"[I]t is the wine that leads me on, the wild wine that sets the wisest man to sing at the top of his lungs, laugh like a fool – it drives the man to dancing... it even tempts him to blurt out stories better never told."
"Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom."
"The wisest man may be a blind father."
"To the wisest man, wide as is his vision. Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square miles."
"If travel were so inspiring and informing a business ... then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers."
"Haste is productive of injury, and so is too much hesitation. He is the wisest man who does everything at the proper time."
"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---"
"The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write."
"The wisest men are wise to the full in death."