Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

- Blake, William

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

Through wisdom is a house built; and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge shall every room be filled with precious and pleasant riches.

Bible

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

Cato The Elder

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.

Goldsmith, Oliver

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Socrates

The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.

Carlyle, Thomas

10.

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

11.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

12.

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

13.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

14.

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Clemenceau, Georges

15.

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

16.

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

Proverb, Chinese

17.

Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings.

Gabirol, Ibn

18.

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

Kraus, Karl

19.

The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.

Borland, Hal

20.

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

21.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

22.

What a wonderful world this would be if there were as many wise people as there are clever people.

23.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

24.

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

Young, Andrew

25.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

26.

The foolish sayings of a rich man pass for wise ones.

Proverb, Spanish

27.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

28.

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

29.

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.

Twain, Mark

30.

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

Levenson, Samuel

31.

There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.

Hoagland, Edward

32.

Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning.

Evans, Bergen

33.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

35.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

36.

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

37.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

38.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

Shaw, George Bernard

39.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

40.

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

Thurber, James

41.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

42.

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

Quintilian

43.

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

44.

The days that are still to come are the wisest witnesses.

Pindar

45.

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

Confucius

46.

As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.

Buddha

47.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.