1,228 Quotes About Words-of-wisdom

"What's that?" the Unbeliever asked. "Wisdom from the Western Taoist,"I said. "It sounds like something from Winnie-the-Pooh ," he said. "It is," I said. "That's not about Taoism," he said. "Oh, yes it is," I said."

... if you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, I desire you to produce that reasoning. The connection between the two is not intuitive. There is required a medium, which may enable the mind to draw such an inference, if indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument. What that medium is, I must confess, passes my comprehension; and it is incumbent on those to produce it, who assert that it really exists, and is the origin of all our conclusions concerning matter of fact.

We find in the course of nature that though the effects be many, the principles from which they arise are commonly few and simple, and that it is the sign of an unskilled naturalist to have recourse to a different quality in order to explain every different operation.

The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.

And as this is the obvious appearance of things, it must be admitted, till some hypothesis be discovered, which by penetrating deeper into human nature, may prove the former affections to be nothing but modifications of the latter. All attempts of this kind have hitherto proved fruitless, and seem to have proceeded entirely from that love of simplicity which has been the source of much false reasoning in philosophy.

The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomena, is probably the true one.

If you try you may fail, if you don't try you're guaranteed to fail.

Seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.

Upon the solution of this problem, or upon sufficient proof of the impossibility of synthetical knowledge a priori, depends the existence or downfall of metaphysics.