To change your mind and to follow him who sets you straight is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.
The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.
- Topic: Knowledge, Wisdom
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Marcus Aurelius
To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.
Be grateful that on this raging sea you have a mind to guide you.
Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.
Whatever happens at all happens as it should; you will find this true, if you watch narrowly.
The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it.
It is the responsibility of leadership to work intelligently with what is given, and not to waste time fantasizing about a world of flawless people and perfect choices.
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For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.
One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear.
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse.
All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.
Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.
There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic. A man’s own observation, what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health.
