“The decline of violence may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species.”
Steven Pinker · The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011
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Wisdom Quotes
WisdomTruth
649 quotes on wisdom and truth — from the classics to the everyday.
“Bad things can happen quickly, but good things aren't built in a day, and as they unfold, they will be out of sync with the news cycle.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
“We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one. But there is no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
“The world has made spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being. Here is a second shocker: almost no one knows about it.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
“Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue, to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.”
Socrates · attributed
“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
Socrates · attributed
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.”
Socrates · attributed
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
Socrates · Plato, Phaedo
“Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.”
Socrates · attributed
“Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.”
Socrates · attributed
“Know thyself.”
Socrates · adopted from the Delphic maxim
“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
Socrates · attributed
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”
Socrates · attributed
“An honest man is always a child.”
Socrates · attributed
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
Socrates · attributed
“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
Socrates · attributed
“Let him who would move the world first move himself.”
Socrates · attributed
