Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Carlyle, Thomas

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

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

Evans, Bergen

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Clemenceau, Georges

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

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd preferred to talk.

Larson, Doug

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

Buddha

10.

Timing, degree and conviction are the three wise men in this life.

Fitzhenry, R. I.

11.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

12.

Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

Brecht, Bertolt

13.

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

14.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

15.

If you wish to know the road up the mountain, ask the man who goes back and forth on it.

Zenrin

16.

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

17.

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

Saroyan, William

18.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

19.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

20.

We cannot advance without new experiments in living, but no wise man tries every day what he has proved wrong the day before.

Adams, James Truslow

21.

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

Pindar

22.

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all your getting get understanding.

Bible

23.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

24.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

25.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

Mencken, H. L.

26.

The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple. [Psalms 19:7]

Bible

27.

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

Thurber, James

28.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

29.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

30.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

31.

A wise man will see to it that his acts always seem voluntary and not done by compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

32.

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

Kraus, Karl

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

36.

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

37.

Beauty is the wisdom of women. Wisdom is the beauty of men.

Proverb, Chinese

38.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Basho, Matsuo

39.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

40.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

41.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

42.

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, -- every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.

Marden, Orison Swett

43.

Wisdom is better than weapons of war. [9:18b, Ecclesiastes]

Bible

44.

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

Socrates

45.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

46.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

47.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

48.

By the time your life is finished, you will have learned just enough to begin it well.

Marx, Eleanor

49.

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

50.

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