No Substitute For Wisdom Quotes & Sayings

Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual. They have been unpopular, as was natural. — Bertrand Russell

Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me was the ability to think in quotations. — Margaret Drabble

There is no substitute for knowledge. To this day, I read three newspapers a day. It is impossible to read a paper without being exposed to ideas. And ideas - more than money - are the real currency for success. — Eli Broad

Like many things in our national life, we miscalculated. We overestimated our ability to control events, which is one of the great dangers of a great power. Power tends to be a substitute for judgment and wisdom. — Hubert H. Humphrey

Hallowing God's name requires praise for the goodness and greatness of his redemptive work too, with its dazzling blend of wisdom, love, justice, power, and faithfulness. By wisdom God found a way to justify the unjust justly; in love he gave his Son to bear death's agony for us; in justice he made the Son, as our substitute, suffer the sentence that our disobedience deserved; with power he unites us to Christ risen, renews our hearts, frees us from sin's bondage, and moves us to repent and believe; and in faithfulness he keeps us from falling, as he promised to do (see John 10:28ff.; 1 Corinthians 1:7ff.; 1 Peter 1:3-9), till he brings us triumphantly to our final glory. We do not save ourselves! Neither the Father's saving grace, nor the Son's saving work, nor our own saving faith originate with us; all is God's gift. Salvation, first to last, is of the Lord, and the hallowing of God's name requires us to acknowledge this, and to praise and adore him for the whole of it. — J.I. Packer

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Shine the light of awareness on your disempowering beliefs and choose to substitute them with empowering beliefs. This way you will choose love over fear and your path to purpose becomes clear. — Sharon Kirstin

If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes. — Barbara Tuchman

I have to say, I'm not someone who's really big into my family history - never really was very curious about it. The only thing I know about it is what I picked up from my aunts and parents. — Robert Barry

He said that everything in this world, small or large, was created for a reason. Even the smallest mosquito that bites people and makes them itch. There is wisdom behind that itch, in that it can be a substitute for a corresponding irritation in Hell. He said that every trouble we land in comes from a sin which would not be forgiven without that trouble. — Leila Aboulela

Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch
as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward. — Ambrose Bierce

Seize every opportunity to fulfill your calling. — Lailah Gifty Akita

An old person knows what it's like to be young, but a young person doesn't know what it's like to be old. There's no substitute for life experience. — Eleanor Brownn

Another way to speak of the anxiety is in terms of the gap between information and knowledge. A barrage of data so often fails to tell us what we need to know. Knowledge, in turn, does not guarantee enlightenment or wisdom. (Eliot said that, too: "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?") It is an ancient observation, but one that seemed to bear restating when information became plentiful - particularly in a world where all bits are created equal and information is divorced from meaning. The humanist and philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford, for example, restated it in 1970: "Unfortunately, 'information retrieving,' however swift, is no substitute for discovering by direct personal inspection knowledge whose very existence one had possibly never been aware of, and following it at one's own pace through the further ramification of relevant literature." He begged for a return to "moral self-discipline. — James Gleick

Education is no substitute for intelligence. — Frank Herbert

God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks - his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to him to substitute artificial metal forks for them when eating. — James Cross Giblin

Silence is one of the hardest kind of arguments to refute. There is no good substitute for wisdom; but silence is the best that has yet been discovered. — Josh Billings

Modern science has placed in human hands the power to do things that were previously unimaginable. Technology, the development of ever more sophisticated
means for achieving any end we choose, dominates modern and modernized societies. But there is a growing perception that science and technology are no substitute for wisdom - for the power to discern what ends are in accordance with the truth and the power to judge rightly between alternative ends. — Lesslie Newbigin

La Leche League and the What to Expect books are even explicit about this fear: the pacifier, they warn, cannot substitute for a mother. This is the rare piece of parenting wisdom that manages to be both condescending and confusing. Condescending because it seems unlikely that parents who were considering using a pacifier - parents diligent enough to look it up in a book - were also considering abandoning their child altogether. Confusing because, well - what? How would a pacifier substitute for a mother - how exactly? Are there pacifiers on the market that cuddle and feed and rock and dote on a child? Is a mother nothing more than a nipple? — Nicholas Day

A wise man will not trust too much those who admire him, even for his wisdom. He knows that an admirer is never truly satisfied until he can substitute pity for his admiration and disdain for his applause. Our admirers are always on the lookout for evidence of our collapse. They find a solace in the fact that our superiority was transitory and that we end as they do - old and useless. — Ben Hecht

This concept of the afterlife really functions as a substitute for wisdom. It functions as a substitute for really absorbing our predicament, which is that everyone is going to die; there are circumstances that are just catastrophically unfair; evil sometimes wins and injustice sometimes wins, and that the only justice we are going to find in the world is the justice we make.
We have an ethical responsibility to absorb this, really down to the soles of our feet. And this notion of an afterlife, of how it's all going to work out and its all part of god's plan, is a way of shirking that responsibility. — Sam Harris

Money is a cheap but powerful substitute for Jesus, and wielding money is intoxicating, but it won't usher in the kingdom of God, nor will it ensure eternal treasures. — Mary E. DeMuth

Prediction in a complex world is a chancy business. Every decision that a survival machine takes is a gamble, and it is the business of genes to program brains in advance so that on average they take decisions that pay off. The currency used in the casino of evolution is survival, strictly gene survival, but for many purposes individual survival is a reasonable approximation. — Richard Dawkins

To be strong enough to know when you are weak, brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

Not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of the difficulty and challenge.

Not to substitute words for actions.

To be proud and unbending in honest failure but humble and gentle in success.

To seek out and experience a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of lift, an appetite of adventure over love of ease.

To seek a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination and to exercise a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity.

To be modest so that you will appreciate the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

To be serious, yet never to take yourself too seriously; to cry, but also to laugh.

To discover the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what is next, and the joy and inspiration of life. — Mark Weber

Intelligence is no substitute for wisdom. Live long enough to get wise, eh? — Adrian McKinty

Intelligence is an ability to understand, but it is not a substitute for wisdom. — Debasish Mridha