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If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein Personal Recollections (1981)

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Wisdom

More quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.

Culture and Value (1980)

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

Culture and Value (1980)

Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

Culture and Value (1980)

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

The way you use the word "God" does not show whom you mean — but, rather, what you mean.

Culture and Value (1980)

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If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

George Chapman All Fools (1605)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ludwig Wittgenstein (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.