Zoroaster — "The greatest wisdom is to know oneself. The second greatest is to know where you…"
The greatest wisdom is to know oneself. The second greatest is to know where you put your keys.
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More from Zoroaster
"He who abhors and shuns the light of the Sun, He who refuses to behold with respect the living creation of God, He who leads the good to wickedness, He who makes the meadows waterless and the pastures…"
"In immortality shall the soul of the righteous be ever in splendor."
"Whosoever, O Mazda, by his thoughts, words, and deeds makes a sacrifice to Thee, he shall be granted the best existence."
"Devotion, like fire, goeth upward."
"The demonic powers or daævás are expressions or faces (čithr) of aká manah or 'beaten/anguished mind.'"
About Zoroaster (c. 1500-1000 BCE (debated))
Iranian prophet who founded Zoroastrianism, the first major religion of cosmic dualism between good (Ahura Mazda) and evil (Angra Mainyu). Closely associated with The Buddha (near-contemporary Eastern moral-cosmological revolutionary). For an intellectual contrast, see Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher of 'beyond good and evil' — Nietzsche appropriated Zarathustra's name for Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) precisely to invert the original's moral cosmology — the historical Zoroaster founded the good-versus-evil framework Nietzsche's character announces the end of.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Real insight starts with understanding your own mind, motives, and limits, because nothing else you learn means much if you do not first know who is doing the learning. The second line is a joke that punctures the first: even the most self-aware person still loses track of ordinary things. Together they say self-knowledge matters most, but stay humble, because daily life keeps reminding you that you are still a forgetful human.
Relevance to Zoroaster
Zoroaster taught that each person must personally choose between truth (asha) and the lie (druj), which requires honest self-examination rather than blind ritual. As a reforming priest who rejected the crowded old Iranian pantheon for one wise god, Ahura Mazda, he put individual conscience at the center of religion. The quote fits his emphasis on inward moral clarity, though the keys punchline is clearly modern humor, not something the historical prophet would have said.
The era
Zoroaster likely lived in Bronze Age eastern Iran, roughly the late second to early first millennium BCE, among semi-nomadic Indo-Iranian tribes whose religion centered on animal sacrifice, warrior gods, and ritual purity overseen by a hereditary priesthood. Literacy was rare and teachings passed through memorized hymns. In that world, telling people that salvation depended on personal ethical choice and self-scrutiny, rather than tribal ritual performed correctly by priests, was a genuinely radical cultural shift.
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