A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

Men can know the nature of things

Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. The more stupid the man, the larger his stock of adamantine assurances, the heavier his load of faith.

Men are reasoning rather than reasonable animals.

We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but we can’t be wise with other men’s wisdom.” That’s because wisdom isn’t a body of information. It’s the moral quality of knowing what you don’t know and figuring out a way to handle your ignorance, uncertainty, and limitation.

For though men be ignorant, yet they are men

Old men want to feel that the experience which has come with their years is valuable, that their advice is valuable, that they possess a sagacity that could be obtained only through experience — a sagacity that could be of use to young men if only young men would ask.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them.

A corroboration of what I have said is the fact, that the young come to be geometricians, and mathematicians, and Scientific in such matters, but it is not thought that a young man can come to be possessed of Practical Wisdom: now the reason is, that this Wisdom has for its object particular facts, which come to be known from experience, which a young man has not because it is produced only by length of time.

Men may the wise atrenne, and naught atrede.