Polymaths Quotes

• I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

  Karl Kraus

  Vision, Saws, Literature

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

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• I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

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  All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

  Galileo Galilei

  Inspirational, Truth, Science

  "Angels in the workplace: stories and inspirations for creating a new world of work". Book by Melissa Giovagnoli, 1999.

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• The 'polymath' had already died out by the close of the eighteenth century, and in the following century intensive education replaced extensive, so that by the end of it the specialist had evolved. The consequence is that today everyone is a mere technician, even the artist.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Artist, Today, Century

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• What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

  John Lubbock

  Inspirational, Being Happy, Attitude

  Sir John Lubbock (1897). “The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders of the World We Live In”, p.2, Library of Alexandria

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• Having a good idea is one thing, but persuading other people to buy it is quite another. Good inventors are polymaths: they think with their hands and their brains. They're experts in design, engineering and business.

  James Dyson

  Thinking, Engineering, Hands

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• You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world, you also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.

  Richard Dawkins

  Giving, Understanding, Tutorial

  "The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

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• It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

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• You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.

  Dale Carnegie

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Education

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• Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence. This is the equation.

  Averroes

  Positive, Fear, Hate

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• Art is never finished, only abandoned.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Art, Mislead Us, Design

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• Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Friendship, Real, Intelligent

  Leonardo da Vinci (2008). “Notebooks”, p.267, OUP Oxford

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• When you compare yourself with others in matters of wealth, position, and health, you should look at people less favoured than yourself. When you compare yourself with others in matters of religion, knowledge and virtue, look at people who are better than yourself.

  Ibn Hazm

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Health

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• Ibn Firnas was a polymath: a physician, a rather bad poet, the first to make glass from stones (quartz), a student of music, and inventor of some sort of metronome.

  Lynn Townsend White, Jr.

  Glasses, Physicians, Stones

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• The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth.

  Jagadish Chandra Bose

  Truth, Law, Words Of Wisdom

  "Oriental Philosophy". Book by Ted Gambordella, 2008.

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• Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Love, Life, Adversity

  "Da Vinci Notebooks".

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• Wisdom is the daughter of experience

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Daughter, Wisdom, Intelligent

  Leonardo Da Vinci (2015). “Thoughts on Art and Life: "Behind the Genius"”, p.31, eKitap Projesi

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• Dark clouds become heaven's flowers when kissed by light.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Flower, Dark, Clouds

  Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray (2007). “Poems”, p.424, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Get Well Soon, Health, Italian

  James C. Humes, Benjamin Franklin (1995). “The wit and wisdom of Benjamin Franklin: a treasury of more than 900 quotations and anecdotes”, Harpercollins

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• It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Life, Positive, Wisdom

  'The Poet at the Breakfast Table' (1872) ch. 10

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• To present a whole world that doesn’t exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we’re polymaths. That’s just the act of all good writing.

  William Gibson

  Real, Writing, World

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• Leonardo Da Vinci. Leonardo is arguably the world's most famous polymath. So many thoughts and so many different ideas!

  William Gurstelle

  Ideas, Different, World

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• A well-spent day brings happy sleep.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Motivational, Happy, Death

  Codice Trivulziano 281

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• Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people.

  Alexander von Humboldt

  Animal, People, Vices

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• What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Art, Men, Passing Away

  Leonardo Da Vinci (2011). “Da Vinci Notebooks”, p.93, Profile Books

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