Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Buddha

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

Twain, Mark

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

Bible

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

Gabirol, Ibn

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

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

Saroyan, William

I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.

Hesse, Hermann

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

Thurber, James

10.

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

11.

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

12.

The man who questions opinions is wise. The man who quarrels with facts is a fool.

Garbutt, Frank

13.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

15.

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed Wisdom. And then I know exactly what is going to follow: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

16.

Even though you know a thousand things, ask the man who knows one.

Proverb, Turkish

17.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

19.

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

20.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

21.

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

22.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

23.

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

Marx, Eleanor

24.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

25.

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

26.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

27.

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

28.

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

Young, Andrew

29.

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool.

Azai, Rabbi Ben

30.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

31.

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

32.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

33.

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

Maeterlinck, Maurice

34.

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

35.

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

36.

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

Confucius

37.

Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

38.

A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.

Rowland, Helen

39.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

40.

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

41.

The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.

Aurelius, Marcus

42.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

43.

Many people might have attained wisdom had they not assumed they already had it.

44.

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

Butler, Samuel

45.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

James Boswell

46.

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

Fitzhenry, R. I.

47.

True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.

Bouton, E. S.

48.

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

49.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

50.

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