Gene Wolfe Quotes

Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.

The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.

I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.

Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change.

We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.

What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask.

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's.

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Maybe I think too much.

Once you start asking questions, innocence is gone.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

Who knows most, doubts most.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom.

Knowing what I don't know helps me every day.

My personal feeling is that people need to be careful not to start over-analyzing and taking things apart and trying to be critical.

To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again.

You'll consider what you did wrong & bookend your reflections with hunger - no supper, no breakfast.

If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing.

We all find ourselves involved in projects or activities that confound us-when or why did I say I would do this? What was I thinking? I needed a poem for myself that said-pause longer. Think again.

To understand our own thinking is to understand all thinking.

Write about what you don't know about what you know.

To admit ignorance is to exhibit wisdom.

There may be men who act without understanding why. I do not. To listen much, pick out the good and follow it; to see much and ponder it: this comes next to understanding.

Have I been wrong? Have I been wise to shut my eyes?