Quotations Database
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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
Knowledge, wisdom, and understanding don’t come out of the microwave. You got to keep moving forward because the evil doesn’t sleep. We should live and learn; but by the time we’ve learned, it’s too late to live. To whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48). If you have heard that line of wisdom, you know it means we are held responsible for what we have. If we have been blessed with talents, wealth, knowledge, time, and the like, it is expected that we benefit others. Ayn Rand’s rejection of the moral code that condemns selfishness as the ultimate evil and holds up self-sacrifice as the ultimate good is a radical challenge to received wisdom, an invitation to a startlingly new way to see the world. Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise. We will never win as long as we allow ourselves to doubt that justice exists only when people are willing to defend it…May the lesson nourish the wisdom of resistance deep within our hearts. A true philosopher does not see by the eyes of others and forms his own convictions only by the evidence. He was like Socrates, who did not consider himself a citizen of one city but of the world…he embraced the universality of countries and of ages…. To get away from the present state of feeling, to restore lucidity and proportion to our judgments, let us read every evening a page of Montaigne. There are people whose watch stops at a certain hour and who remain permanently at that age. The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world. Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom. Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of truth. Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer. Ignorance frequently begets confidence more than does knowledge. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…. A loving heart is the truest wisdom. There is a wisdom of the head, and… a wisdom of the heart. Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom. Consciousness is the phenomenon whereby the universe’s very existence is made known. Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn. Big words seldom accompany good deeds. We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past. Paper and brush may kill a man; you don’t need a knife. The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. When you want to test the depths of a stream, don’t use both feet. The beginning of wisdom is the realization that what is of concern today won’t seem important tomorrow. Even when we fancy that we have grown wiser, it may be only that new prejudices have displaced old ones. The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better. Dedication and responsibility, Semi-educated people join cults whose whole purpose is to dull the pain of thought or take medications that claim to abolish anxiety. Oriental religions, with their emphasis on Nirvana and fatalism, are prepackaged for Westerners as therapy and platitudes or tautologies masquerade as wisdom. Parents accept their obsolescence with the best grace they can muster…they do all they can to make it easy for the younger generation to surpass the older, while secretly dreading the rejection that follows. Families are the bedrock of well-being for their individual members, both children and adults. They give their members financial security, healthy emotional growth, and the life experience that imparts spiritual and practical wisdom. For children in particular, living a happy family life teaches them that the larger world – of which their family is an image – is good, a lesson that children carry all through their lives. Moreover, families act in the larger social dialogue in ways that individuals do not, through inter-couple relationships, collective parenting networks, and intergenerational support. Flourishing communities are as much defined by the engagement of families as of individuals. What distinguishes wisdom? It is a type of intelligence but not one synonymous with IQ, general intelligence, or academic honors. It is knowledge, yes, but not reducible to the mere sum of books read, lectures attended, or facts acquired. Perhaps it has something to do with living through hardship, emerging a better person, able to share what has been learned with others. The strengths that wisdom encompasses are those entailing the acquisition and use of knowledge into human affairs, such as creativity, curiosity, judgment, and perspective. In English, we have no single word that captures “love of learning.” In Chinese, there is a single phrase “hao-xue-xin” which translates into English as “the heart and mind for wanting to learn” and nicely captures this strength of character. Strengths of wisdom and knowledge include positive traits related to the acquisition and use of information in the service of the good life. The wise man lacks nothing but needs a great number of things, whereas the fool, on the other hand, needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lacks everything. Skepticism and doubt lead to study, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. The pursuit of truth shall set you free, even if you never catch up with it. Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown. Truth is a torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it. [In Elizabethan England, when Shakespeare was writing] uncertainty and ignorance seemed man’s natural lot. To give one striking example: so little was understood about the plague that devastated Europe in the late sixteenth century that orders were given in London to exterminate all cats and dogs—which were in fact the best enemies of the true carriers of the germs responsible, rats. Man does not have the capacity to satisfy his epistemological desires—he is too prone to illusion, error, and uncertainty. We cannot be sure that our senses are not deceiving us, or that our reasoning faculties yield sound inferences, even whether we are dreaming. Man is a small and feeble creature, epistemologically blighted, and not able to comprehend the universe. The skeptic, we might say, is a kind of tragedian about knowledge: he admits that Aristotle’s dictum is correct—people do desire to know; they are not indifferent to knowledge—but he claims that this desire is necessarily thwarted. Thus a basic value in human life is declared unrealizable, and this is our tragedy. Other values may be brought in to make up for the fate of that one: acquiescence, epistemological stoicism, modesty, clear-sightedness. But it is admitted that the Good of Knowledge is unobtainable; like Socrates, we must accept that our best knowledge is simply the knowledge that we are ignorant. Self-knowledge like knowledge of other selves is not always reliable; a person can be quite wrong about his character, and the way his mind operates. Self-knowledge, when possessed, is a hard-won achievement, not a given; it tends to come Shakespeare’s characters only toward the end of their ordeals. Skepticism is not the tedious insistence that “you can’t be certain of anything in this world”; it is not merely excessive caution in the face of the necessity to believe. Rather, skepticism reflects deep structural truths about our faculties for knowing—particularly, the relationship between evidence and fact. Our reasons for belief can be alarmingly removed from what we believe in. Othello’s enemy was as much his own unruly mind as the deceiver Iago. In short, Shakespeare wasn’t caught between the Bible and Newton’s Principia, as if one of these had to be the ultimate model for understanding the human mind. He didn’t have to view the mind through the lens of scientific mechanism or the lens of supernaturalism—as if the mind had to behave like either a billiard ball or a mystical infusion from God. Shakespeare could look at the mind without theoretical or metaphysical preconceptions, and he had a remarkably sharp eye. What he offers us is the human mind as we recognize it—as we experience it in the marketplace and the home. Shakespeare’s peculiar genius should be seen in his submission to nature. He didn’t impose his own vision on reality; he let reality impose itself on his vision. He told us how the world looks from the perspective of itself. nd the world never looked the same again. Unless we teach our children peace, someone else will teach them violence.
Far beyond the laws governed by man,
Release the power within you,
To attain all the wisdom of the universe.
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Today's Quote
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
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