Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

- Blake, William

Best Quotes about Wisdom

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month's study of books.

Proverb, Chinese

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man.

Handey, Jack

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life -- in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Seneca

11.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

12.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

13.

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.

Levenson, Samuel

14.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

Colton, Charles Caleb

15.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

16.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

17.

It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

Maeterlinck, Maurice

18.

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.

Blake, William

19.

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness.

Covey, Stephen R.

20.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

21.

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

Marilyn vos Savant

22.

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

Quintilian

23.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

Asimov, Isaac

24.

Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men.

Talmud, The

25.

The wise man says it cannot be done, but the fool goes and does it.

26.

The wisdom of a learned man comet by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. [Ecclesiasticus 38:25]

Bible

27.

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

28.

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

29.

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.

Cullen Hightower

30.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

Bacon, Francis

31.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

32.

Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. [Proverbs 3:13-15]

Bible

33.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Socrates

34.

The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.

Boileau, Nicholas

35.

Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

36.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

37.

Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.

Butler, Samuel

38.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

39.

Wisdom is perishable. Unlike information or knowledge, it cannot be stored in a computer or recorded in a book. It expires with each passing generation.

Taylor, Sid

40.

Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser.

Carlyle, Thomas

41.

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.

Freud, Sigmund

42.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

Confucius

43.

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

44.

The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise. [Proverbs 15: 31]

Bible

45.

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

46.

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.

47.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

48.

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .

49.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

Edmund Burke

50.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh