Wisdom

We all know dogmatists who are more concerned about holding their opinions than about investigating their truth. ... If they are mistaken, they will never discover it; they have condemned themselves to perpetual error. Human beings (including myself) sometimes use their beliefs for wish-fulfillment. Too often we believe what we want to be true.

Horse[Man you will find herea new representation of the universeat its most poetic and most modernMan man man man man manGive yourself up to this art where the sublimedoes not exclude charmand brilliancy does not blur the nuanceit is now or never the momentto be sensitive to poetry for it dominatesall dreadfullyGuillaume Apollinaire].

It’s very dangerous to invent something in our times; ostentatious men of the other world, who are hostile to innovations, roam about angrily. To live in peace, one has to stay away from innovations and new ideas. Innovations, like trees, attract the most destructive lightnings to themselves.

Diversity is wisdom.

Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.

Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.

If Eve was inferior to Adam because she was created after him, then Adam was inferior to the fishes, because they preceded him.

We are never more in danger than when we think ourselves most secure nor in reality more secure than when we seem to be most in danger.

Unfortunately, we spend more time teaching our daughters how to avoid becoming rape victims than teaching our sons not to become rapists.

A man stroking a dog’s head means the universe is stroking the universe; a child playing with a little dog means the universe is playing with the universe! If the universe is a theatre play, then we can be sure that there is only one player: The universe itself! Everything we see is the same player!

[S]cience has contributed a great deal to war and violence, and people well trained in science are sometimes not entirely rational and are even dogmatic. We have to find a way to teach reflectively, not just scientifically.

The strictest judges are ignorant people.

A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.

Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs.

The imagination is a healthy thing, and a great many scientific discoveries could not have been made without it, but it need to be harnessed to some serious object if it is to come to anything.

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.

The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.

You don't get to become someone's hero unless you are already another's monster.

Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.