Wisdom quotes

Words about judgment, experience and seeing clearly.

• ...no book in the world deserves to be so unceasingly studied, and so profoundly meditated upon as the Bible.

• My custom is, to read four or five chapters every morning, immediately after rising from my bed. It employs about an hour of my time, and seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day.

• From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.

• The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

• The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

• Meeting new people and new situations becomes an interesting adventure, and one learns to value fresh experiences as much as old associations.

• Science has not mastered prophesy. We predict too much for next year yet far too little for the next ten.

• Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis for man's desire to understand.

• Man must understand his universe in order to understand his destiny.

• The fact is that we cannot have it both ways. Can we be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war?

• The lesson of past agony is that without the people we can do nothing--with the people we can do everything.

• We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another--until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

• The divide of race has been America's constant curse.

• Each generation of Americans must define what it means to be an American.

• The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.

• Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.

• Status quo, you know, that is Latin for "the mess we're in."

• From now on in America, any definition of the successful life must include service to others.

• My friends, we are not the sum of our possessions.

• I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself.

• We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression.

• War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency.

• The period of exclusiveness is past.

• Gentlemen, let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not conflict, and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war.

• Isolation is no longer possible or desirable.

• Personally, I do not resort to force — not even to the force of law — to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example — of fashion.

• We should recollect also that the season of peace is best adapted to these preparations.

• The true view of the Executive functions is, as I conceive it, that the President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied and included within such express grant as proper and necessary to its exercise.

• Substantial progress toward better things can rarely be taken without developing new evils requiring new remedies.

• The world is not going to be saved by legislation, and it is not going to be injured by an occasional two years of respite from the panacea and magic that many modern schools of politicians seem to think are to be found in the words: "Be it enacted."

• Only a peace between equals can last.

• Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished.

• The firm basis of government is justice, not pity.

• Starting an atomic war is totally unthinkable for rational men.

• I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the "cold war" began to overshadow our lives.

• The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

• What men owe to the love and help of good women can never be told.

• Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.

• I only knew what was in my mind, and I wished to express it clearly, so that there could be no mistaking it.

• Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

• ...you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.

• Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

• There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

• The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people.

• Under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen, and the contempt of our people for economy and frugality in their personal affairs deplorably saps the strength and sturdiness of our national character.

• Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

• Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

• As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

• Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

• A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

• I can resist everything except temptation.

• No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

• There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

• The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.

• The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

• There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

• It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression.

• I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

• The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

• Do I contradict myself? / Very well then . . . . I contradict myself; / I am large . . . . I contain multitudes.

• Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me, / And whatever I do or say I also return.

• I am the poet of the body, / And I am the poet of the soul.

• I exist as I am, that is enough, / If no other in the world be aware I sit content, / And if each and all be aware I sit content.

• I loafe and invite my soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease . . . . observing a spear of summer grass.

• When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

• Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

• Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

• Resolved, That woman is man’s equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

• I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim which says, “Do not get others to do that which you can do yourself.” My motto, on the other hand, is, “Do not do that which others can do as well.”

• The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

• It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

• There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void.

• Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

• Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct.

• Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

• Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.

• “Knowledge is power.” Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge—is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.

• Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

• Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

• Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.

• Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

• Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true, we may give Advice, but we cannot give Conduct.

• …dost thou love Life, then do not squander Time, for that’s the Stuff Life is made of.

• Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead.

• Remember that Time is Money. He that can earn Ten Shillings a Day by his Labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle one half of that Day, tho’ he spends but Sixpence during his Diversion or Idleness, ought not to reckon That the only Expence; he has really spent or rather thrown away Five Shillings besides.

• The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.

• Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

• ’Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign world—So far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it—for let me not be understood as capable of patronising infidility to existing engagements.

• Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.

• Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.

• Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

• Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

• If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controuls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to controul the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to controul itself.

• I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

• If there be one crevice through which a single drop can fall, it will certainly rust off the slave's chain.

• A great man is always willing to be little.

• Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk.

• All sober enquirers after truth, ancient and modern, Pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity consists in virtue.

• Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all Divines and moral Philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man.

• Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that to a humane and generous mind, no expence for this purpose would be thought extravagant.

• Fear is the foundation of most governments; but is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men, in whose breasts it predominates, so stupid, and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

• I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.

• …there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the œconomy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity…

• As a very important source of strength & security cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible: avoiding occasions of expence by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it—avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expence, but by vigorous exertions in time of Peace to discharge the Debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen which we ourselves ought to bear.

• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

• …there hardly ever existed such a thing as a bad Peace—or a good War.

• Printers are educated in the Belief, that when Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick; and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.

• To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

• To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

• …the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

• Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.

• Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

• Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.

• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

• each generation is as independant of the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before.

• Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, & deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.

• I am certainly not an advocate for frequent & untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because when once known, we accomodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects.

• we might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilised society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

• but I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.

• The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

• Observe good faith & justice towds all Nations cultivate peace & harmony with all—Religion & morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?