Wisdom and Ignorance

Too clever is dumb.

Ogden Nash, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in Wisdom and Ignorance

If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.

Anaïs Nin, in Happiness and Misery and Wisdom and Ignorance

We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are.

Anaïs Nin, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

Robert J. Oppenheimer, (on Albert Einstein), in Wisdom and Ignorance

You have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man could be such a fool.

George Orwell, in Wisdom and Ignorance

You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.

Dorothy Parker, (when asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence), in Wisdom and Ignorance

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Ellen Parr, in Wisdom and Ignorance

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Blaise Pascal, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

Luciano Pavarotti, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.

Wendell Phillips, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Everything you can imagine is real.

Pablo Picasso, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

Plato, The Republic, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Thinking is the soul talking to itself.

Plato, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

Plato, in Wisdom and Ignorance

'Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

Alexander Pope, (from Golden Treasury of the Familiar), in Wisdom and Ignorance

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

Colin Powell, in Wisdom and Ignorance

People who don't think probably don't have brains; rather, they have grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake.

Joan Powers, Pooh's Little Instruction Book, in Wisdom and Ignorance

'Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

Samuel Johnson, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance