I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.

A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.

Better know nothing than half-know many things.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and elevated opinions.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.