Does Age Bring Wisdom?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Clint Eastwood

Actor

"Take your profession seriously; don't take yourself seriously. Don't take yourself seriously in the process, because you really only matter to a certain degree in the whole circus out here. If you take yourself seriously you're not going to be able to move forward and use your best artistic instincts. You're going to be hampered by always wanting to look in the mirror and see if you have enough tuna oil on your hair or something like that."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Anti-Apartheid Cleric

"In the traditional village there used to be those who are called elders. They would say to young people, "Sometimes the best way of winning an argument is not to have an argument at all." It seems so obvious: most of the time, when you are provoked, you want to give as good as you got; and that often does not resolve the problem, it just exacerbates it because the other person also gets upset and wants to give back as much as they've got.

Actually, anger is natural and it is something to be welcomed. Imagine someone seeing a child being abused and saying, "Oh well, this doesn't matter." You'd say there was something jolly well wrong with that person."

Denis Healey

Former British Chancellor of the Exchequer

"You can learn an enormous amount from photographs."

Dame Judi Dench

Actress

"If you're taken up too much with being famous and doing things like having to wear really expensive clothes and things, you don't get enough time to actually think about what you're doing. I have no time for fame with nothing behind it.

I feel that I'm constantly learning, in every single thing I've ever done. I've never, ever, in fifty-one years, done a play that has come easy to me. And I've fallen over in every play I've done except three in fifty-one years, too; in A Little Night Music I fell over three times. I can't keep upright."

Frank Gehry

Architect

"I don't think we should deny tradition. It's obvious that you have to learn from tradition. Almost everything you do has been done before in some form or another. We were asked to do the master plan for Harvard's expansion, and (Harvard President) Larry Summers asked me, "If my faculty, my board, and a lot of people say that the business school is their favourite building on campus, why wouldn't I build everything in the future like that?" And that's difficult because I like that building too, and I like the architect. The answer I had for him was: when you do that you're telling your kids and future generations that you didn't have a response to the time and place you live in, so you decided to use a model from the past. You didn't have an idea as to how to present the place in today's terms. What you're saying to future students is: go backwards to go forwards."

more...

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29...1777505,00.html

[rocks 494]

age gives experience... i'm not sure that directly equals wisdom though, some people will never learn.

and of course dare i mention mccain, he's a dinosaur and he doesn't seem very wise to me

[HAL 9000 96]

Well, politics aside, I think it does in most areas of life.

[Peikko 1,575]

No. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't - but yes, age has to lead to experience if only empirically.

[Sprailenes 47]

I've met quite a few stupid old people so I would have say: no.

[morocco4ever 63]

most of the time, when you are provoked, you want to give as good as you got; and that often does not resolve the problem, it just exacerbates it because the other person also gets upset and wants to give back as much as they've got.

I agree with that. It's way more effective to piss them off by offering them a group hug instead.

[IAMX 3,055]

I'm not terribly fond of old things. Whether it be old furniture, old styles, old movies, old music, or old people. The only thing I think positively from old is "lessons learned" -- and evolution.

[Otto 83]

I think most 'young' people will answer the OP's question with some amount of scepticism...which is typical...