Wisdom of Experience Quotes

I'm old fashioned. I'm not one of these young guys who think they are so smart that they can prescribe what humanity ought to do. Humanity never learns any lessons. Prescriptions don't matter. We already know exactly what to do. We just don't do it.

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.

What matters most is that we learn from living.

He was what I often think is a dangerous thing for a statesman to be - a student of history; and like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

It is true that the present is powerfully shaped by the past. But it is also true that ... insight at any age keeps us from singing the same sad songs again.

The only danger of knowing and thinking a lot about history, is that you will trip on something behind you. Be sure you also look ahead.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

I have always let my heart rule my head, but if I could rewind and start afresh I would listen to my mother. I would agree and follow whatever she told me.

History repeats itself. So you might wanna pay attention.

Even hoar hairs [elderly scholars] have something to learn; and old age, it would seem, cannot in all respects be trusted for wisdom

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

Once, I went speeding past an old couple and smiled as I imagined their conversation: him grumbling about me and her telling him not to be such an old grouch. Then, suddenly I was in tears, thinking, 'I'll never get to be a grumpy old grandpa!'

Visit with your predecessors from previous Administrations. They know the ropes and can help you see around some corners. Try to make original mistakes, rather than needlessly repeating theirs.

You are too young to know how the world changes everyday,' said Mrs Creakle, 'and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old, some of us at all times in our lives.

There comes a time in every man's life when he must make way for an older man.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

There is an old maxim which states that good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from poor judgment. I think something similar can be said of government policy, to wit: Good policy comes from experience, and experience comes from poor policy.

What is past is prologue.

The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.

We must study history to learn its lessons, absorb its spirit of possibility, extract and emulate its models of excellence and possibility and honor the moral obligation to remember. We must measure ourselves in the mirror of the best of our history and constantly ask ourselves how can we use the past as a foundation to inform, expand and enrich our present and future.

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

A wise man is better than a prophet.