Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Quintilian

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

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

Levenson, Samuel

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

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

Epictetus

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

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

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

10.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

11.

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

Bible

12.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

13.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

14.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

15.

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

16.

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

Proverb, Spanish

17.

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

Proverb, Chinese

18.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

19.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

20.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

21.

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.

22.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

23.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

24.

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

Butler, Samuel

25.

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

Saroyan, William

26.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

27.

I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.

Hesse, Hermann

28.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

29.

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

Cato The Elder

30.

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

31.

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

32.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

33.

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.

34.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

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

36.

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

Cheever, John

37.

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

38.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

39.

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

Garbutt, Frank

40.

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

41.

Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.

Elizabeth, Queen

42.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

43.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

44.

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

45.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

46.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

47.

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

Pindar

48.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

49.

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

Young, Andrew

50.

Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. [Proverbs 3:13-15]

Bible