Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Cullen Hightower

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Understanding the limitations of human beings as well as understanding your own is the beginning of true wisdom.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Bouton, E. S.

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

Proverb, Chinese

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

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.

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

Basho, Matsuo

12.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

13.

Wisdom is knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech.

Evangel

14.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

15.

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

Maeterlinck, Maurice

16.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

17.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

18.

No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, --something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.

Connolly, Cyril

19.

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

20.

The wisdom of others remains dull till it is writ over with our own blood. We are essentially apart from the world; it bursts into our consciousness only when it sinks its teeth and nails into us.

Hoffer, Eric

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

24.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

25.

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

26.

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

James Boswell

27.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

28.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

Smiles, Samuel

29.

The end result of wisdom is... good deeds.

Talmud, The

30.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

31.

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

Francis of Assisi, St.

32.

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

33.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

34.

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

Saroyan, William

35.

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

36.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

37.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

38.

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.

39.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

43.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Aristophanes

44.

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

45.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

46.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

47.

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

Evans, Bergen

48.

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