Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

- Phaedrus

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

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

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

Fitzhenry, R. I.

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

Saroyan, William

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

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

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

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

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

11.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

12.

Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.

Goldsmith, Oliver

13.

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

14.

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

Marx, Eleanor

15.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

16.

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

Twain, Mark

17.

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

18.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

19.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

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

21.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

22.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

23.

Follow then the shining ones, the wise, the awakened, the loving, for they know how to work and forbear.

Buddha

24.

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

Ward, William A.

25.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

26.

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

Larson, Doug

27.

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

Bible

28.

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

Cato The Elder

29.

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

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.

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

32.

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

Young, Andrew

33.

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

Bible

34.

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.

35.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

36.

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

37.

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

38.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

39.

Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually marked by an ill placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

40.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

41.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

42.

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

Proverb, Spanish

43.

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

44.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

45.

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

46.

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

Proverb, Chinese

47.

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

Kraus, Karl

48.

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil -- not the strength to choose between the two.

Cheever, John

49.

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.

50.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De