Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

- Russell, Bertrand

Best Quotes about Wisdom

There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.

Hoagland, Edward

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

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

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

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

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

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

10.

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

11.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Basho, Matsuo

12.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

13.

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

Zenrin

14.

It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

Maeterlinck, Maurice

15.

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

Thurber, James

16.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

17.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

18.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

19.

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

20.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

21.

It is not wise to be wiser than necessary.

Quinault, Philippe

22.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

23.

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

Socrates

24.

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

Marx, Eleanor

25.

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

26.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

27.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

28.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

Smiles, Samuel

29.

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

30.

True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.

Bouton, E. S.

31.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

32.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

33.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning.

Evans, Bergen

39.

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

40.

Even though you know a thousand things, ask the man who knows one.

Proverb, Turkish

41.

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

Cheever, John

42.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

43.

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

44.

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

Confucius

45.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

46.

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.

47.

The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.

Borland, Hal

48.

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

Noll, Chuck

49.

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

Bible

50.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von