Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

The wisdom of a learned man comet by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. [Ecclesiasticus 38:25]

Bible

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Clemenceau, Georges

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

11.

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

Bible

12.

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

Proverb, Chinese

13.

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

James Boswell

14.

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

15.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

16.

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

17.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

18.

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

Bible

19.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

20.

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

21.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

22.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

23.

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

Larson, Doug

24.

Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men.

Talmud, The

25.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

Sophocles

26.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

27.

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

Garbutt, Frank

28.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

29.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

30.

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

31.

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

Pindar

32.

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

33.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

34.

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

Zenrin

35.

Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.

Walt Whitman

36.

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

Proverb, Camerounian

37.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Epictetus

42.

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

Socrates

43.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

44.

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