Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

- Socrates

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

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

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

Aristophanes

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

Twain, Mark

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

Noll, Chuck

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

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

10.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

11.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

12.

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

Evans, Bergen

13.

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.

14.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

James Boswell

15.

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

16.

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

Ward, William A.

17.

Beauty is the wisdom of women. Wisdom is the beauty of men.

Proverb, Chinese

18.

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

19.

It is not wise to be wiser than necessary.

Quinault, Philippe

20.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

21.

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

Levenson, Samuel

22.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

23.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

24.

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

28.

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

Proverb, Turkish

29.

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

30.

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

31.

The live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart.

Bhagavad Gita

32.

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

33.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Larson, Doug

37.

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

38.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Gibran, Kahlil

39.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

40.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

41.

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

Robbie Gass

42.

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

43.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

44.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

45.

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

Proverb, Camerounian

46.

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

Saroyan, William

47.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

48.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

49.

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. [1 Corinthians 3:18-19]

Bible

50.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De