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

There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.

Luther, Martin

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

Young, Andrew

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.

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

Proverb, Chinese

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

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

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

Zenrin

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

Bible

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

Marx, Eleanor

10.

A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning.

Noll, Chuck

11.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Gibran, Kahlil

12.

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

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 does not show itself so much in precept as in life -- in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Seneca

15.

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

16.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

17.

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

18.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

19.

If I don't have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance.

Buscaglia, Leo

20.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

21.

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

22.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

23.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

24.

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

Evangel

25.

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.

26.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

27.

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

Ziggy

28.

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

Garbutt, Frank

29.

The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.

Proverb, Camerounian

30.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

31.

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

32.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

Confucius

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

36.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

37.

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

Pindar

38.

When you move amidst the world of sense, free from attachment and aversion alike, there comes the peace in which all sorrows end, and you life in the wisdom of the Self.

Bhagavad Gita

39.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

40.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

41.

He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God.

Epictetus

42.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

43.

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

Butler, Samuel

44.

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

Ward, William A.

45.

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

46.

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

Levenson, Samuel

47.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

48.

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

Confucius

49.

Action should culminate in wisdom.