Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. [1 Corinthians 3:18-19]

Bible

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

Butler, Samuel

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

Saroyan, William

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

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

James Boswell

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

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

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

Talmud, The

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

10.

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

Mencken, H. L.

11.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

12.

Committing a great truth to memory is admirable; committing it to life is wisdom.

Ward, William A.

13.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

14.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

15.

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

16.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

17.

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

18.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

19.

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

20.

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

Aristophanes

21.

Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.

Ziggy

22.

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

23.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

24.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

25.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

26.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

27.

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

Bible

28.

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

Twain, Mark

29.

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

Kraus, Karl

30.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

31.

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

Proverb, Spanish

32.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

33.

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

34.

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

Garbutt, Frank

35.

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

Bible

36.

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

37.

It is not wise to be wiser than necessary.

Quinault, Philippe

38.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

39.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

40.

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Clemenceau, Georges

41.

The live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart.

Bhagavad Gita

42.

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

43.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

44.

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

Bouton, E. S.

45.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

46.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

47.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

48.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

49.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

50.

Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a participation of that one eternal, immutable and increased wisdom of God, or several signatures of that one archetypal seal, or like so many multiplied reflections of one and the same face, made in several glasses, whereof some are clearer, some obscurer, some standing nearer, some further off.

Cudworth, Ralph J.