Wise Words, Part 2

Mostly from people who are smarter than I am. Some of them may apocryphal or misattributed, but they contain wisdom nonetheless.

I thought it might be helpful to those who haven’t stumbled across the same motley crew of writers that I have to include either a link to a brief biography or a word of explanation.

Winston Churchill

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

John Ruskin

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.

The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but to enjoy the right things—not merely industrious, but to love industry—not merely learned, but to love knowledge—not merely pure, but to love purity—not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.

Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Søren Kierkegaard

Our age reminds one very much of the disintegration of the Greek state. Everything continues, and yet there is no one who believes in it. The invisible spiritual bond that gives it validity has vanished, and thus the whole age is simultaneously comic and tragic: tragic because it is perishing, comic because it continues.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Thorin Oakenshield (The Hobbit): If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

Faramir (The Lord of the Rings): I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.

C. S. Lewis

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time .

Demosthenes (Athenian statesman, 384–322 BC)

It is impossible to quell the foes without, until you have punished those within your gates.

Ambrose Bierce (The Devil’s Dictionary)

BLACKGUARD, n. A man whose qualities, prepared for display like a box of berries in a market—the fine ones on top—have been opened on the wrong side. An inverted gentleman. [For the “proper” definition of blackguard, see here.]

EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

H. L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

Thomas Sowell

People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right—especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.

Johnathan Hale (Architect)

Now that we have built the world the 19th Century imagined, we notice the pain of what’s missing.

Richard Feynman (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1965)

I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.

Michael Polanyi

The information in DNA could no more be reduced to the chemical than could the ideas in a book be reduced to the ink and paper: something beyond physics and chemistry encoded DNA.

Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence.

Philip K. Dick (Science Fiction Writer)

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away [H/T to Steve Inman]

Kandace Springs (Singer/songwriter, “Novocaine Heart”)

This world has so much madness
Disguised in eyes of sadness.

Truth is lost upon the masses
People wear sunglasses
In the dark.

Ice is running through their veins
But I ain't taking novocaine
For my heart.