Wisdom - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it)

- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures inWonderland (1865)

You are a wise man, Professor - for one who has not lived even a single lifetime.

- Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, Dracula (play, 1927)

You are wiser than your friends, my dear sir, and therefore you are less impatient.

- James Hilton, Lost Horizon (1933)

Perhaps the exhaustion of the passions is the beginning of wisdom.

- James Hilton, Lost Horizon (1933)

He had some wits, as well as luck and a magic ring - and all three are very useful possessions.

- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937)

If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.

- Edgar Rice Burroughs, Llana of Gathol (1948)

Too much wisdom is a bad thing. It makes one cynical, overcautious, backward-looking.

- Malcolm Jameson, ''Pride'' (1942)

The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.

- William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)

He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.

- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)

If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it.

- Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)

Goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)

Sometimes one must try anything, he decided. It is no disgrace. On the contrary, it is a sign of wisdom, of recognizing the situation.

- Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.

- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

From that time on he was the ruler of the Argonautians and became a great philosopher, for he devoted himself to the study of nothingness, there being nothing less than this to meditate upon.

- Stanislaw Lem, ''The Advisers of King Hydrops'' (1965), translated by Michael Kandel (1977)

He believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

Age does not bring wisdom. Often it merely changes simple stupidity into arrogant conceit.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1973)

We take foul medicines to improve our health; so we must entertain foul thoughts on occasion, to strengthen wisdom.

- BrianW. Aldiss, ''The Small Stones of Tu Fu'' (1978)

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

- Orson Scott Card, Xenocide (1991)

When the sun was still young and men fools who worshipped war, the wise ones of Urth took for themselves the names of humble plants to teach men wisdom.

- GeneWolfe, ''Empires of Foliage and Flower'' (1993)

''Those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know,'' it muttered. ''Thus wisdom remains uninherited.''

- Steve Aylett, ''Angel Dust'' (1998)