Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

- Socrates

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Proverb, Spanish

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

Twain, Mark

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

Buscaglia, Leo

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

Bible

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

Larson, Doug

As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.

Buddha

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Pindar

13.

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

Cheever, John

14.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

15.

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

16.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

17.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

18.

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all your getting get understanding.

Bible

19.

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

Epictetus

20.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

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

Proverb, Turkish

25.

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

26.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

27.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

28.

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

Evans, Bergen

29.

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.

30.

Wisdom is knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech.

Evangel

31.

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

Socrates

32.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Aristophanes

33.

Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

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

36.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

37.

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

38.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

39.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

40.

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

Proverb, Camerounian

41.

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

42.

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

43.

What a wonderful world this would be if there were as many wise people as there are clever people.

44.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

45.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

46.

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

47.

Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.

Robbie Gass

48.

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

Buddha

49.

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

50.

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