Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Proverb, Spanish

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

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

Talmud, The

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

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

Brecht, Bertolt

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

10.

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

Young, Andrew

11.

Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.

Watson, Thomas J.

12.

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.

13.

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

Cullen Hightower

14.

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

Mencken, H. L.

15.

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.

16.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

17.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of face within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.

Coolidge, Calvin

18.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

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

Proverb, Camerounian

21.

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

22.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

23.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

24.

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

Socrates

25.

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

26.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

27.

Many people might have attained wisdom had they not assumed they already had it.

28.

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

29.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

30.

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

31.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

32.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

33.

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

Bible

34.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

35.

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

Quintilian

36.

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

37.

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

Cheever, John

38.

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

39.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

40.

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

Larson, Doug

41.

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

Bible

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.

Aurelius, Marcus

45.

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

46.

A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.

Rowland, Helen

47.

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

Saroyan, William