A Quote by Christian Nestell Bovee

Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones. — © Christian Nestell Bovee
Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones.
No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.
I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.
How many persons fancy they have experience simply because they have grown old!
It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however, ancient, can be trusted without proof. ... Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
I have only so many foreign-language neurons. When I learned Spanish, that displaced whatever Irish was left, and then I learned German, and that displaced the Spanish, and when I learned Serbo-Croatian, that displaced the German. So I'm a bit of a muddle.
Nobody who loved life and new experiences that much was ever going to get old, not really. Wiser and eventually dead, maybe, but not old.
Even in an advanced stage of civilization, there is always a tendency to prefer those parts of literature which favor ancient prejudices, rather than those which oppose them; and in cases where this tendency is very strong, the only effect of great learning will be to supply the materials which may corroborate old errors and confirm old superstitions. In our time such instances are not uncommon; and we frequently meet with men whose erudition ministers to their ignorance, and who, the more they read the less they know.
Truth only seems old fashioned nowadays because we've grown so accustomed to deceit and manipulation. But Truth is eternal, so it can never be old or new. It never 'was' or 'will be.' It just 'is.' It always 'is.' Truth never grows old, and if you believe in it and try to live by it, you will always be, in some ways - the only ways that matter - the youngest, freshest, most energetic rebel on the block.
While there may be no "right" way to value a forest or a river, there is a wrong way, which is to give it no value at all. How do we decide the value of a 700-year-old tree? We need only to ask how much it would cost to make a new one, or a new river, or even a new atmosphere.
Make new friends, but keep the old; Those are silver, these are gold. New-made friendships, like new wine, Age will mellow and refine. Friendships that have stood the test - Time and change - are surely best; Brow may wrinkle, hair grow gray, Friendship never knows decay. For 'mid old friends, tried and true, Once more we our youth renew. But old friends, alas! may die, New friends must their place supply. Cherish friendship in your breast- New is good, but old is best; Make new friends, but keep the old; Those are silver, these are gold.
The chief enemy of peace is the spirit of unreason itself: an inability to conceive alternatives, an unwillingness to reconsider old prejudices, to part with ideological obsessions, to entertain new ideas or to improve new plans.
If they embark on this course the difference between the old and the new education will be an important one. Where the old initiated, the new merely 'conditions'. The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds- making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation-men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.
When we enter a new situation in life and are confronted by a new person, we bring with us the prejudices of the past and our previous experiences of people. These prejudices we project upon the new person. Indeed, getting to know a person is largely a matter of withdrawing projections; of dispelling the smoke screen of what we imagine he is like and replacing it with the reality of what he is actually like.
To be perfectly honest, I think that as I'm growing older, I'm just growing more impatient. I'll be very happy if at some point people say, 'Michael's grown wiser and softer in his old age.' But we'll have to wait and see what my next project is.
The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices.
Do not be deceived by the outward appearance of age or youth - a new pitcher may be full of good, old wine, while an old one may be totally empty.
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