Famous Quotes & Sayings

Ben Jonson

To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

Alexis de Tocqueville

It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants.

Albert Schweitzer

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... the truly wise person is colorblind.

It is easier to look wise than to talk wisely.

The wise man does nothing but what can be done openly and without falseness, nor does he do anything whereby he may involve himself in any wrong-doing, even where he may escape notice. For he is guilty in his own eyes before being so in the eyes of others; and the publicity of his crime does not bring him more shame than his own consciousness of it.

Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous.

George Washington

If we are wise, let us prepare for the worst.

Samuel Butler

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

Samuel Butler

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.

Alec Waugh

To be excited and at the same time satisfied; to desire and possess -that has been described somewhere as the wise man's idea of heaven.

Alejandro Jodorowsky

One becomes wise only in measures, as he goes through his own insanity.

Aleister Crowley

The sot drinks, and is drunken: the coward drinks not, and shivers: the wise man, brave and free, drinks, and gives glory to the Most High God.

Alberto Salazar

I'm doing great heart-wise. I get a complete stress test once a year, and those have gone well. I have stents in two arteries, and they are holding up. My other arteries haven't shown any additional clogging.

Albert Einstein

Numerous are the academic professors, but rare are wise and noble teachers.

Albert Einstein

All our thoughts and concepts are called up by sense-experiences and have a meaning only in reference to these sense-experiences. On the other hand, however, they are products of the spontaneous activity of our minds; they are thus in no wise logical consequences of the contents of these sense-experiences. If, therefore, we wish to grasp the essence of a complex of abstract notions we must for the one part investigate the mutual relationships between the concepts and the assertions made about them; for the other, we must investigate how they are related to the experiences.

Albert Einstein

To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window.

Albert Einstein

Truth is what stands the test of experience.

Albert Einstein

Even a fool is wise after an event.

Albert Einstein

The only thing we can be certain of in this life is that we can be certain of nothing.

Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Imagination is the language of the soul. Pay attention to your imagination and you will discover all you need to be fulfilled.

Algernon Blackwood

The Wise are silent, the Foolish speak, and children are thus led astray.

Algernon Sidney

[A]ll popular and well-mixed governments [republics] . . . are ever established by wise and good men, and can never be upheld otherwise than by virtue: The worst men always conspiring against them, they must fall, if the best have not power to preserve them. . . . [and] unless they be preserved in a great measure free from vices . . . .

Algernon Sidney

Machiavel, discoursing on these matters, finds virtue to be so essentially necessary to the establishment and preservation of liberty, that he thinks it impossible for a corrupted people to set up a good government, or for a tyranny to be introduced if they be virtuous; and makes this conclusion, 'That where the matter (that is, the body of the people) is not corrupted, tumults and disorders do not hurt; and where it is corrupted, good laws do no good:' which being confirmed by reason and experience, I think no wise man has ever contradicted him.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

There is no safety-net to protect against attraction.

Alfred North Whitehead

You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.

Alfred North Whitehead

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tis held that sorrow makes us wise.

Alcuin

At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose.

Aldo Leopold

The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills. They represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave those rewards and penalties, for wise and foolish acts against which civilization has built a thousand buffers.

Aldous Huxley

Facts are ventriloquist’s dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.

Aldous Huxley

I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise.

Albert Pike

Know thou the self (spirit) as riding in a chariot, The body as the chariot. Know thou the intellect as the chariot-driver, And the mind as the reins. The senses, they say, are the horses; The objects of sense, what they range over. The self combined with senses and mind Wise men call "the enjoyer.

Albert Pike

For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be free is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and brave; and to be the opposite of all these is the same as to be a slave.