The essence of wisdom is humility, but this humility…

Page 72. The essence of wisdom is humility, but this humility must be blinded with profound empathy for human beings and keen awareness of human frailty. Enduring wisdom is based on one standing in the presence of eternity, on one’s interactions with human beings, and one sympathetic involvement in the lives of others.

— from The Flight Plan (Purpose/Wisdom/Risk) · Koren Pirkei Avot

In the book

Einstein drew the line in a single stroke: a clever person solves a problem, but a wise person avoids it. You do not receive wisdom as a gift handed down — you must discover it for yourself, after a journey no one else can take for you; that is why its beginning is humility, and why in the end it is not study but practice that is the main thing. And the third part of the plan is the one no one volunteers for: risk, the fare you pay for going anywhere worth going. — The Flight Plan (Purpose/Wisdom/Risk)

As Luzzatto wrote at the opening of his own book of guidance, he had not written it to teach people what they did not know, but to remind them of what they already knew and constantly forget — which is why he said you'd get nothing from a single reading, only from returning to it again and again. The essence of all of it is a kind of wisdom that is mostly humility, blended with a deep empathy for other people and a clear-eyed awareness of how frail we all are. There is one more piece, and the research is unusually clear about it: the single most powerful thing you can do for a family is the simplest — build a strong family narrative. — Legacy / The Logbook (Legacy/Epilogue)

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