Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

We're blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We're not designed to know how little we know.

I'm a smart guy, I like to think of myself as a smart guy, but sometimes I go out there and do a lot of dumb stuff.

How easy it is to think well of ourselves. Until the moment is upon us, we can never be certain.

One's belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one's conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren't always right.

Most fools think they are only ignorant.

It is a human tendency "to measure truth and error by our capacity."

Let's face it, most of us are not half as smart as we may sometimes think we are-- and for intellectuals, not one-tenth as smart.

Now that physics is proving the intelligence of the universe what are we to do about the stupidity of mankind? I include myself. I know that the earth is not flat but my feet are. I know that space is curved but my brain has been condoned by habit to grow in a straight line. What I call light is my own blend of darkness. What I call a view is my hand-painted trompe-l'oeil. I run after knowledge like a ferret down a ferret hole. My limitations, I call the boundaries of what can be known. I interpret the world by confusing other people's psychology with my own.

No one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.

All too willingly man sees himself as the centre of the universe, as something not belonging to the rest of nature but standing apart as a different and higher being. Many people cling to this error and remain deaf to the wisest command ever given by a sage, the famous "Know thyself" inscribed in the temple of Delphi.

The Foole doth thinke he is wise, but the wiseman knowes himselfe to be a Foole.

No one seemed able to look at themselves, coolly, from the outside. Their reality was all that could be seen in the light cast ahead by their own wishful thinking.

We are often confident even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are.

Everyone's perspective of themselves and others is based on the limitations of their exposure.

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.

To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.

we are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. but we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around. most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge. we are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value.

The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.

The thing I have to keep in mind and I try to keep in mind about myself, about anyone, is you do the best you can do at the time.

We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.

For alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron.

People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true.

We tend to see our character flaws as simple defects, and the simple defects of others as character flaws.