Wise Quotes about Falseness

Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge -
broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false,
and lofty things from low.
- Helen Keller

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones;
to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
- Thomas Jefferson

There are trivial truths and there are great truths.
The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false.
The opposite of a great truth is also true.
- Niels Bohr

Beware of false knowledge;
it is more dangerous than ignorance.
- George Bernard Shaw

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.
- William Shakespeare

FEAR is an acronym in the English language
for "False Evidence Appearing Real."
- Neale Donald Walsch

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
- William Shakespeare

False words are not only evil in themselves,
but they infect the soul with evil.
- Socrates

I think and think for months and years.
Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false.
The hundredth time I am right.
- Albert Einstein

It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary
to put all the play and learning into childhood,
all the work into middle age,
and all the regrets into old age.
- Margaret Mead

Constant development is the law of life,
and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas
in order to appear consistent
drives himself into a false position.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

I am persuaded that the world has been tricked into adopting
some false and most pernicious notions about consistency -
and to such a degree that the average man has
turned the rights and wrongs of things entirely around
and is proud to be "consistent," unchanging, immovable, fossilized,
where it should be his humiliation.
- Mark Twain

Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
- William Butler Yeats

The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken

"Mother Teresa Prayer"
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
... Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you
of selfish, ulterior motives;
... Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some
false friends and some true enemies;
... Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
... Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
... Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
... Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
... Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
... Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
We can do no great things - only small things with great love.
- although commonly attributed to Mother Teresa,
who kept a copy of this prayer on
the wall of her Calcutta orphanage,
this prayer was actually written by Kent Keith.

I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq
was unnecessary and unjust.
And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.
- Jimmy Carter

Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.
- Thomas Szasz

One man with courage makes a majority.
- old saying probably repeated by Andrew Jackson
(falsely attributed to Jefferson)

Be who you are and say what you feel
because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.
- commonly but falsely attributed to Dr. Seuss,
this misquote consists of the Bernard Baruch quote,
"Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
with additional words added anonymously.

When I saw you I fell in love,
and you smiled because you knew.
- commonly but falsely attributed to William Shakespeare

If you wait for opportunities to occur,
you will be one of the crowd.
- Edward de Bono

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences.
No one can eliminate prejudices -
just recognize them.
- Edward R. Murrow

Majority rule only works if you're also
considering individual rights,
because you can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong

One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.
- Helen Keller

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

When written in Chinese, the word "crisis"
is composed of two characters.
One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
- John F. Kennedy

No one was ever named "Hero" for following the crowd.
Heroes set their own course.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The greatest mistake you can make in life
is to be continually fearing you will make one.
- Elbert Hubbard

One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

The highest and most beautiful things in life
are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but,
if one will, are to be lived.
- Soren Kierkegaard

How is it that one rails against that
which is nearly a certainty?
- Mary Anne Radmacher

We should not moor a ship with one anchor,
or our life with one hope.
- Epictetus

Society is a masked ball,
where every one hides his real character,
and reveals it by hiding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is well to remember that the
entire population of the universe,
with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
- Andrew J. Holmes

One who is too insistent on his own views,
finds few to agree with him.
- Lao Tzu

It is impossible to begin to learn
that which one thinks one already knows.
- Epictetus

Money has never made man happy, nor will it,
there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.
The more of it one has the more one wants.
- Benjamin Franklin

One of the surest ways to cause
yourself great suffering
is to insist upon being right -
to demand that all others view life
exactly as you view it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

An instructed and intelligent people
are always more decent and orderly
than an ignorant and stupid one.
- Adam Smith

The fox has many tricks.
The hedgehog has but one.
But that is the best of all.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are as many pillows of illusion
as flakes in a snow-storm.
We wake from one dream into another dream.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I had three chairs in my house;
one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
- Henry David Thoreau

Joy increases and suffering decreases
as one masters the distinction between events
and one's feelings about those events.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One thing I know: the only ones among you
who will be really happy are those
who will have sought and found how to serve.
- Albert Schweitzer

The final delusion is the belief
that one has lost all delusions.
- Maurice Chapelain

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man.
Everything that exists has brought
with it its own peculiar lesson.
- Orison Swett Marden

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Writers, alas, have to be fools in public,
while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
- Erica Jong

The essence of all religions is one.
Only their approaches are different.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Each one of us has our own perspective
on everything we see in life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

This isn't a rehearsal or a practice life.
This is your real life - your one and only real life.
There are no retakes - no second chances.
Begin now - live full out.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent
of what nature has revealed to us.
- Albert Einstein

About most subjects, there is not "The Truth;"
there is merely one's personal truth.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor,
nor should life rest on a single hope.
- Epictetus

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs.
Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
- John F. Kennedy

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Wisdom Quotes