Wisdom Quotes

"When the severity of punishment is increased, the desire to commit crime is not necessarily decreased."

"To judge a man, do not ask what he does, but why he does it."

"To understand a man's actions, one must first understand his circumstances."

"Wisdom is not the accumulation of facts, but the understanding of principles."

"True wisdom is knowing the limits of one's knowledge."

"The path to wisdom begins with the admission of ignorance."

"The world improves not through the force of the strong, but through the wisdom of the just."

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

"It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong."

"The problem is not the problems we have, but our inability to accept them."

"I find myself more and more relying on the theory of animal spirits."

"We are slaves to our preconceptions and habits of thought."

"Markets are mechanisms for aggregating information, but they regularly fail spectacularly."

"Moderation and common sense should prevail in all things, particularly in economics."

"An economy cannot be understood by treating it as a machine with fixed relationships."

"We must be careful not to mistake correlation for causation in economic analysis."

"We progress when we abandon the pretense of knowing things we do not actually know."

"A man who has no systematic philosophy will be the slave of his own random thoughts."

"You cannot spend what you have not earned; living beyond your means is living in an illusion."

"There is no such thing as a free lunch; every benefit must be paid for by someone."

"A society that punishes success and rewards failure is a society in decline."

"The only way to prevent monopoly is through free entry into the market, not through government regulation."

"The market is not perfect, but it is less imperfect than any alternative devised by man."

"The true measure of a man is not what he possesses, but what he contributes to society."

"Wisdom comes not from years, but from experience and reflection."

"The examined life is the only life worth living."

"The pursuit of virtue is the highest calling."

"To assume that such knowledge is given to the planner in concentrated or 'integrated' form is to assume away the main problem."

"The fundamental problem of any centrally planned system is the problem of knowledge."

"The more extensively you plan, the more you eliminate the possibility of adaptation."