Quotes about Wisdom

We will live in more beautiful, wise and humane communities when we have learnt to reorient the system of ambition, when the most driven and energetic individuals have the chance to win honour through work that taps into mankind's highest needs.

These are classic insiders—the fussy traditionalists who operate close to the center and seldom break with convention. In such traditionalistic organizations, intelligence and decision making tend to be drawn out from the reservoir of inherited wisdom. These inherited ideas are seen to be inviolable, even sacrosanct.

The great evangelist Dwight Moody once said, "When I was a young Christian, I thought that God kept His gifts on shelves and the best gifts were on the highest shelves and I would have to reach up. I learned later the best gifts are on the lowest shelf and I had to stoop down."

My father always used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument." Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.

We learn from history that we don't learn from history!

Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.

While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.

It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to His Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today.

Perhaps you still think you ought to think out beforehand and know what you ought to do. To that there is only one answer. You can only know and think about it by actually doing it. You can only learn what obedience is by obeying. It is no use asking questions; for it is only through obedience that you come to learn the truth.

The idea that we could have avoided many of life's difficulties if we had taken things more cautiously is too foolish to be entertained for a moment. As I look back on your past I am so convinced that what has happened hitherto has been right, that I feel that what is happening now is right too. To renounce a full life and its real joys in order to avoid pain is neither Christian nor human.

Simplicity is an intellectual achievement, one of the greatest.

We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved.