Search the Wisdom Archive

Quotations Database

Search the Wisdom Archive

Quotations Database

16 years in the making, this 36,000 motivational quote search engine can identify quotations by the name of the author, keyword, gender, general ethnicity, and by phrase. It’s yours to use for free. I think it is the most diverse, deep, and far-reaching quotation search engine on values, ethics, and wisdom anywhere in the Milky Way galaxy. Enjoy! – Jason

 

 

The nature of our moral selves has intrigued and eluded scholars in religion, philosophy, and psychology for centuries. Advances in modern science have given us many reasons to think that we are increasingly close to uncovering the substrates of what makes a person “moral.”

~ Abigail A. Baird and Emma V. Roellke

In the eyes of many of our Christian citizens, it is more important to honor the will of a higher being—a God that provides no support for the children in foster programs, or the mothers in dire financial circumstances, or the survivors of sexual assault.

~ Abigail Jablon

The conscience is … A brake, not a guide; a fence, not a way. It raises its voice after a wrong deed has been committed, but often fails to give us direction in advance of our actions.

~ Abraham J. Heschel

No client ever had enough to bribe my conscience or to stop its utterance against wrong and oppression.

~ Abraham Lincoln

No client ever had money enough to bribe my conscience, or to stop its utterance against wrong and oppression. My conscience is my own, my creator’s, not man’s.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Psychologists find that people will ignore or even deny the existence of a problem if they’re not fond of the solution. Liberals were more dismissive of the issue of intruder violence when they read an argument that strict gun control laws could make it difficult for homeowners to protect themselves. Conservatives were more receptive to climate science when they read about a green technology proposal than about emissions restriction proposal.

~ Adam Grant

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

~ Adam Smith

In his groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Immanuel Kant had argued that behaving morally towards others required one to respect them “for themselves” and not use them as a “means” to one’s own enrichment or glory. With reference to Kant, Marx now accused the bourgeoisie, and its new science of economics, of practicing “immorality” on a grand scale. 

~ Alain de Botton

Newton made the world seem ordered and lucid. He made the human mind seem capable of understanding the very architecture and design of God in nature; a law is the wisdom of God made manifest through the natural world.

~ Alan Kors

The point of the liberal arts and sciences, the point of your liberal education, is to liberate you.

~ Alan Nordstrom

Our moral and spiritual development should be aided by advancing sciences and technologies that cultivate and inculcate wisdom more widely than ever before.

~ Alan Nordstrom

The science of human happiness is called Wisdom, and those who know best how to achieve and maintain happiness we call Wise. The long heritage of that ancient science of sages who have pondered the secrets of happily living with ourselves and with others is called the Wisdom Tradition.

~ Alan Nordstrom

…Everyone who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. The pursuit of science leads therefore to a religious feeling of a special kind, which differs essentially from the religiosity of more naïve people.

~ Albert Einstein

I have never felt I was wasting time. Science is a process of trial and error. The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no ideas.

~ Albert Einstein

For the rest of my life, I want to reflect on what light is.

~ Albert Einstein

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.

~ Albert Einstein

All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike.

~ Albert Einstein

All religions, arts, and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

~ Albert Einstein

Time and again, the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally, by pure thought, without any empirical foundations — in short, by metaphysics.

~ Albert Einstein

Concerns for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

~ Albert Einstein

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

~ Albert Einstein

The experience of the now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and the future, but this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics.

~ Albert Einstein

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

~ Albert Einstein

I urge a willingness to reserve a place in rational science for non-rational wonder.

~ Albert Einstein

Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.

~ Albert Einstein

Scientific greatness is less a matter of intelligence than character; if the scientist refuses to compromise or accept incomplete answers and persists in grappling the most basic and difficult questions.

~ Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

~ Albert Einstein

The scientific theorist is not to be envied. For Nature, or more precisely, experiment, is an inexorable and not very friendly judge of his work. It never says “Yes” to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says “Maybe,” and in the great majority of cases simply “No.” Probably every theory will some day experience its “No” — most theories, soon after conception.

~ Albert Einstein

The more one chases after quanta, the better they hide themselves.

~ Albert Einstein

Do you remember how electrical currents and “unseen waves” were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.

~ Albert Einstein

…we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.

~ Albert Einstein

When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it’s only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.

~ Albert Einstein

…A positive aspiration and effort for an ethical-moral configuration of our common life is of overriding importance. Here no science can save us. I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values.

~ Albert Einstein

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

~ Albert Einstein

While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge. If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Sinoza’s Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements.

~ Albert Einstein

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

~ Albert Einstein

Never do anything against conscience, even if the State demands it.

~ Albert Einstein

The more I study physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.

~ Albert Einstein

…there may not be any questions that the sciences cannot answer eventually, in the long run, when all the facts are in, but certainly there are questions that the sciences cannot answer yet.

~ Alexander Rosenberg

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

~ Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

From the time when the exercise of the intellect became a source of strength and wealth, we see that every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea became a germ of power placed within the reach of the people.

~ Alexis de Tocqueville

Religion will not gain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.

~ Alfred North Whitehead

Honesty compels serious men, on examination of their consciences, to admit that the old faith is no longer compelling. It is the very peak of Christian virtue that demands the sacrifice of Christianity.

~ Allan Bloom

For Immanuel Kant, the term ‘philosophy’ refers to a science of wisdom. Wisdom means knowledge of the final ends of action. To call oneself a ‘philosopher’, then, is to claim (in Kant’s words) ‘to be a master in the knowledge of wisdom, which says more than a modest man would claim; and philosophy, as well as wisdom, would itself always remain an ideal.’

~ Allen Wood

It’s definitely very hard to have faith in the regulatory agencies in our government, but I think to suggest that the CDC, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — just to name a few — are all in a massive conspiracy to underplay the dangers of vaccines is a bewildering leap.

~ Amanda Peet

It’s not clear that there are any ‘right’ philosophical arguments, because philosophers — who are really, really smart men and women — have been disputing these great ideas for the better part of almost three millennia. So, that’s just sort-of ‘the nature of philosophy’ and one of the things that makes it different from the harder sciences.

~ Andrew Butler

The establishment of Christianity, beginning a new evolution of theology, arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years. First, there was created an atmosphere in which the germs of physical science could hardly grow — an atmosphere in which all seeking in Nature for truth as truth was regarded as futile.

~ Andrew Dickson White

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

~ Andrew Jackson

My conscience stands void of offense, and will go quietly with me, regardless of the insinuations of those who, through management, may seek an influence not sanctioned by integrity and merit.

~ Andrew Jackson

This was the reason why I had no alternative but grimly to resist evil and why in the struggle to defend justice I have always been indifferent to the hatred I inspired in men who wielded greater power than mine — an indifference inspired by the knowledge that I had freely followed my conscience.

~ Anicius Boethius



Note that copyright for motivational quotes, stanzas, lyrics, etc. in many cases is held by those who wrote the words, and permission to copy or reprint those words is not being granted by me. I urge you to look up “fair use of copyrighted material” and make your own decision about how, when, and where to use the words of others. If you feel I have infringed on your copyright by placing one of your inspirational quotes in the database, please contact me and I will quickly give it due consideration.

View The Full Values Of The Wise Series™

Ancient Wisdom and Progressive Thinking Brought to Life

See Full Series