Life & Wisdom Quote by Gerald Brenan

Brenan’s line lands like a polite correction to the kind of certainty that passes for intelligence. “Wisdom” isn’t defined here as having the right ideas, or even having a lot of them, but as maintaining a live awareness that your ideas are breakable. That phrase “keeping a sense” matters: fallibility isn’t a one-time admission or a rhetorical nod to humility. It’s a discipline, something you hold onto precisely when your opinions start to feel most airtight.

The subtext is a critique of modern argument-as-identity. If your views are extensions of the self, revising them feels like self-erasure; Brenan insists wisdom is the opposite move, separating ego from belief so reality can get a vote. He’s also wary of the seductive moral status that certainty provides. Conviction can look like character, but it often functions as insulation, a way to stop listening while still feeling principled.

Context sharpens the edge. Brenan lived through the ideological furnace of the 20th century, when grand systems promised total explanations and delivered mass suffering. Against that backdrop, fallibilism isn’t soft relativism; it’s a safety mechanism. By insisting “all our views and opinions” are potentially wrong, he’s leveling the hierarchy between pet theories and sacred causes. Wisdom, in his framing, is not neutrality but intellectual self-restraint: the ability to act, argue, and commit without pretending your mind is a court of final appeal.