Robert Nozick Quotes

Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.

Sometimes there is equal or more ability in knowing how to use good advice than there is in giving it.

Experience is a safe guide.

What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?

Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting.

The highest wisdom has but one science-the science of the whole-the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it.

The older I grow the more I become certain that it makes no difference what words we use to tell the same truths.

A learned person will become noble only when he or she has put into real practice what has been learned, instead of mere words.

There are as many forms of advice as there are colors of the rainbow. Remember that good advice can come from bad people and bad advice from good people. The important thing about advice is that it is simply that. Advice.

Learning is an active process. We learn by doing.. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.

What is needed is the development in men of that particular type of skill which will enable them to make social use of knowledge already in their possession; enable them to apply simple, sometimes self-evident, truths to the guidance of their common life.

Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.

It is not difficult to know a thing; what is difficult is to know how to use what you know

Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going. Practice must always be founded on sound theory, and to this Perspective is the guide and the gateway; and without this nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing.

Feeling a little small? Well, in the context of the cosmos, we are small.

Knowledge is vain and fruitless which is not reduced to practice.

Books are good but they are only maps. Reading a book by direction of a man I read that so many inches of rain fell during the year. Then he told me to take the book and squeeze it between my hands. I did so and not a drop of water came from it. It was the idea only that the book conveyed. So we can get good from books, from the temple, from the church, from anything, so long as it leads us onward and upward.

It is better to understand a part of truth and apply it to our lives than to understand nothing at all and flounder helplessly in a vain attempt to pierce the mystery of existence.

One advantage of getting older is knowing when to worry.

Wisdom may be the ultimate arbiter, but is seldom the immediate agent in human affairs.

Education is cheap; experience is expensive.

The best advice I've ever received is, 'No one else knows what they're doing either.

I’m a great believer in common sense, and the older I get I see that common sense is not that common

Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.

Maybe that sounds a bit pretentious, but I think life experience is always more important than technical knowledge.