Quotes to inspire and reflect

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.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

Don't gain the world & lose your soul, wisdom is better than silver or gold.

God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.

Angry people are not always wise.

Think before you speak. Read before you think.

The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.

Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent-that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

In examinations, the foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer.

I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.

The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.

God does not play dice.

Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.

It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.

Nothing happens until something moves.

Nothing is accidental in the universe -- this is one of my Laws of Physics -- except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.

It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true.

A half-truth is the worst of all lies, because it can be defended in partiality.

I'm not smart enough to lie.

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

Lying is done with words and also with silence.

By doubting we come at truth.

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

The best ammunition against lies is the truth, there is no ammunition against gossip. It is like a fog and the clear wind blows it away and the sun burns it off.

Truth has nothing to do with the number of people it convinces.

How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? ... that became for me more and more the real measure of value.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it.

Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All.