Liberty

What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

Edmund Burke, cited by Jeff Myers & David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, pg.366

For Sure

It is better to listen to wise people who reprimand you than to fools who sing your praises.

Ecclesiastes 7:5

Civics Lesson

 

What Is Wisdom?

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

Charles Spurgeon

Ignoring Reality Bites

You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

Ayn Rand

Wisdom Is No Longer Valued

In early America, when most people greatly valued wisdom, parents taught it to their children, and schools taught it to their students. Wisdom, as much as faith, was the reason virtually every home and every school, including universities, taught young people the Bible—and the great Greek and Roman thinkers (who, though not believers in the God of the Bible, were neither irreligious nor atheist).

In the modern era, American and other Western children study neither the Bible nor the literature of the great classic minds. The result is more and more well-educated people who are devoid of wisdom. This why universities became centers of foolishness. The great American thinker William F. Buckley famously said, “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible, Deuteronomy: God, Blessings, and Curses, pg.81-82

Wisdom is Important

A person of average intelligence can have a great deal of wisdom; many do. A person of high intelligence can be a fool; many are. Given how much more important wisdom is than intelligence in leading both a moral and happy life, wisdom is far more important than intelligence. Yet precisely because people so value intelligence, wisdom has become less valued.

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible, Deuteronomy: God, Blessings, and Curses, pg.81

Wisdom is Essential

Without wisdom, all the good intentions in the world are likely to be worthless. Many of the horrors of the twentieth century were supported by people with good intentions who lacked wisdom.

Therefore, because they have so much wisdom, the Torah and the rest of the Bible are indispensable. We live in an age, however, that has little wisdom; many people do not even value it. People value knowledge and intelligence, but not wisdom. This lack of wisdom—certainly in America and the rest of the West—is directly related to the decline in biblical literacy. In the American past, virtually every home, no matter how poor, owned a Bible, which was the primary vehicle by which parents passed on wisdom to their children.

In the modern period, however, people have increasingly replaced Bible-based homes and Bible-based schools with homes and schools in which the Bible plays no role. As a result, we are less wise and more morally confused.

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible, Deuteronomy: God, Blessings, and Curses, pg.xviii

Think About It

"WHEN AN OLD MAN DIES, A LIBRARY BURNS TO THE GROUND."

Sent to me by a fellow believer.

The Need for Wisdom

One must study wisdom to know how to do good, just as much as one must study physics to know how to do physics. If you are taught wisdom, there's a good chance you will become wise. If not, there's a good chance you will be a fool. And fools do a great deal of harm. 

But wisdom is no longer taught by most parents and nearly all schools.

Until the early decades of the 20th century, American students were expected to know the greatest sources of wisdom -- the ancient Greek and Roman writers, Shakespeare and, most important of all, the Bible.

But about 100 years ago, America embarked on the road to hell when it stopped teaching wisdom -- and what wisdom is all about, moral virtue -- when it secularized all education. First the universities and then the lower grades decided that knowledge could substitute for wisdom. Now American young people get no wisdom and, for that matter, little knowledge.

It is not a coincidence that the most foolish institutions in America and the rest of the West are the universities. They are the most radically secular.

You don't have to be religious to realize that the most secular institutions are also the most foolish institutions. You just need not to be a fool.

Dennis Prager, “If the Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, With What Do We Pave the Road to Heaven?”

The Real Division in America

Reasoning Is Important

Value Old People!

Throughout history, not only in ancient Israel, virtually every society greatly valued old people—because old people were associated with wisdom, and wisdom was valued. In the contemporary world, especially in the West, youth is increasingly valued more than age. That is a reflection of the fact that wisdom is less valued and therefore the old are less valued, or the old are less valued and therefore wisdom is less valued. It is hard to know which came first—the devaluing of the old or the devaluing of wisdom. But whichever cause the other, both are tragedies.

In answer to some young people who told the great German-Jewish actor Fritz Kortner he could not understand their problems, Kortner responded, “You were never as old as I am; on the other hand I was as young as you are now.” 

The devaluation of old people is a tragedy for their sake, for society’s sake, and for the sake of the young who can so benefit from being with and learning from the old. Anyone who has, or has had, a bond with a grandparent or a mentor knows how true this is. And the devaluation of wisdom is an even greater tragedy. We live in an age that values—or at least claims to value—knowledge. But knowledge without wisdom tells you nothing about how to lead your life. It is like owning a map but have no destination. If you don’t know where you need to go, knowing exactly where you are is useless.

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible, Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom, pg.355-356

Without Remembering the Past, Wisdom is Impossible

Without remembering, wisdom is impossible. Wisdom is learning from our own lives and from the lives of others. Wisdom matters because good cannot be achieved without it. Good intentions without wisdom lead to either nothing or to actual evil. However much evil movements have appealed to the bad side of people’s natures, almost every one of them, communism being the most obvious example, also appealed to people’s good intentions.

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible, Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom, pg. 137

Remembering the Past Aids Wisdom

People attain wisdom in large part by remembering what happened in the past. No generation can attain wisdom without studying and remembering the past. None of those who believed in the 1960s aphorism, “Never trust anyone over thirty,” became a wise person. Without wisdom, all the good intentions in the world amount to nothing. Intending to do good without having wisdom is like intending to fly an airplane with no knowledge of airplanes or the laws of aerodynamics.

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible, Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom, pg.111

Wisdom vs Knowledge and Intelligence

In recent years, many societies have lost reverence for the old. The reason wisdom, certainly in comparison with knowledge, is often undervalued or not valued at all. And one reason for that is knowledge is far more valued due to extraordinary advances in technology, medicine, and science. Likewise, intelligence is far more valued than wisdom—think of how many parents want their children to be “brilliant” versus how many parent want their children to be wise (in truth, few parents even think in terms of wise, a term that cannot be measured on tests). The loss to society has been immeasurable. Societies need wisdom far more than knowledge; indeed, knowledge without wisdom is likely to lead to catastrophe. Think how societies like Nazi Germany, the USSR, North Korea, and the Iranian mullahs misused both their intelligence and their knowledge.

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible, Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom, pg. 46

Wisdom is NEEDED

All the good intentions in the world are likely to be worthless without wisdom. Many of the horrors of the twentieth century were supported by people with good intentions who lacked wisdom. … [W]e live in an age that not only has little wisdom, it doesn’t even have many people who value it. People greatly value knowledge and intelligence, but not wisdom. And the lack of wisdom—certainly in America and the rest of the West—is directly related to the decline in biblical literacy. In the American past, virtually every home, no matter how poor, owned a Bible. It was the primary vehicle by which parents passed wisdom on to their children.

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible, Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom, pp.xvi-xvii

Presumption

Presumption is a fire-work made up of pride and foolhardiness. It is indeed like a heavy house built upon slender crutches. Like dust, which men throw against the wind, it flies back in their faces, and makes the blind.

Author unknown. Quoted in Was Christ God, by Spiros Zodhiates

The Future and the Past

You cannot successfully navigate the future unless you keep always framed beside it a small clear image of the past.

Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver, pg.120

Stumbling Blocks

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is the way a man uses them.

Author Unknown