A Quote by Will Durant

The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom.

Will Durant

Quote Topics

Happiness Wisdom Wisely World

Quote Author

Will Durant
American - Historian
November 5, 1885 - November 7, 1981

Wisdom loves the children of men, but she prefers those who come through foolishness to wisdom.

Paul Tillich

To possess both wisdom and compassion is the heart of our human revolution. If you have wisdom alone and lack compassion, it will be a cold, perverse wisdom. If you have compassion alone and lack wisdom, you cannot give happiness to others. You are even likely to lead them in the wrong direction, and you won't be able to achieve your own happiness.

Daisaku Ikeda

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. Those who continually search for happiness will never find it. Happiness is made, not found. To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

Bertrand Russell

The wisdom of the Holy Spirit is much greater than the wisdom of the entire world. Within the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, silence prevails; the wisdom of the world, however, goes astray into idle talk.

Isaac of Nineveh

I'll suggest that the happiness hypothesis offered by Buddha and the Stoics should be amended: Happiness comes from within, and happiness comes from without. We need the guidance of both ancient wisdom and modern science to get the balance right.

Jonathan Haidt

Buhhdism is wisdom. As long as we have wisdom, we can put all things to the best use, we can turn everything in the direction of happiness.

Daisaku Ikeda

The tragic hero prefers death to prudence. The comedian prefers playing tricks to winning. Only the villain really plays to win.

Mason Cooley

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

E. O. Wilson

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

Francis Bacon

There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; No wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, And proud men in old age learn to be wise.

Sophocles

Power doesn't create happiness or unhappiness. It depends how you use it. Wisdom is the guiding force that directs happiness.

Frederick Lenz

He who prefers to give Linus the half of what he wishes to borrow, rather than to lend him the whole, prefers to lose only the half.

Martial

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.

Shashi Tharoor

Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery must defend without compromise private ownership in the means of production.

Ludwig von Mises

A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, must become a lover of books.