Famous Quotes & Sayings

Ursula K. Le Guin

What good is power when you're too wise to use it?

Ursula K. Le Guin

To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain.

Tycho Brahe

The mouse is wise, but the cat is wiser.

Twyla Tharp

It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.

Tristan Bernard

To have grown wise and kind is real success.

William Graham Sumner

Yet we are constantly annoyed, and the legislatures are kept constantly busy, by the people who have made up their minds that it is wise and conducive to happiness to live in a certain way, and who want to compel everybody else to live in their way.

William Godwin

The wise man is satisfied with nothing.

William Godwin

Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.

William Golding

The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.

William Golding

Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

William Allen White

You can have no wise laws nor free enforcement of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people -- and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive.

William Arthur Ward

We can learn much from wise words, little from wisecracks, and less from wise guys.

William Arthur Ward

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.

Wilferd Peterson

Those who hope to avoid all failure and misfortune are trying to live in a fairyland; wise people realistically accept failures as a part of life and build philosophies to meet them and make the best of them.

Wilferd Peterson

Sooner or later, a man if he is wise, discovers that life is a mixture of good days and bad, victory and defeat, give and take.

Washington Allston

The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.

Stephen Colbert

Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes'.

Stella Adler

Be innocent, wise and ninety-five.

Sonia Sotomayor

I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.

Sonia Sotomayor

I want to state upfront, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that any racial, ethnic or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge, regardless of their background or life experiences.

Sonia Sotomayor

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Thomas Harris

Hannibal Lecter: We live in a primitive time - don't we, Will? - neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.

Thomas Gray

To each his suff'rings; all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan,- The tender for another's pain, Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'T is folly to be wise.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim.... If, like those of Rochefoucault, it be sparkling and whimsical, it may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few, indeed, of the many wise apophthegms which have been uttered from the time of the Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard have prevented a single foolish action.

Thomas Hobbes

For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned, yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves, for they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance. But this proveth rather that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of any thing than that every man is contented with his share.

Thomas Hobbes

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

Thomas Hobbes

A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.

Thomas Hobbes

Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.

Thomas Hobbes

Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.

Thomas Love Peacock

Seamen three! what men be ye? Gotham's three Wise Men we be. Whither in your bowl so free? To rake the moon from out the sea. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine, And our ballast is old wine.

Thomas Jefferson

I believe that justice is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise Creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society.