Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Talmud, The

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Socrates

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

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

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

Proverb, Camerounian

Through wisdom is a house built; and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge shall every room be filled with precious and pleasant riches.

Bible

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

Elizabeth, Queen

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

Cato The Elder

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Epictetus

15.

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

Confucius

16.

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

Noll, Chuck

17.

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

18.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

19.

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

Bible

20.

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Clemenceau, Georges

21.

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

22.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

23.

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

24.

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

25.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

26.

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

Aristophanes

27.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

28.

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

29.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

30.

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

Robbie Gass

31.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

32.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

33.

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

34.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

35.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

36.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

37.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

38.

Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings.

Gabirol, Ibn

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Proverb, Spanish

42.

When you move amidst the world of sense, free from attachment and aversion alike, there comes the peace in which all sorrows end, and you life in the wisdom of the Self.

Bhagavad Gita

43.

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.

44.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

45.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

46.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

47.

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.