Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Talmud, The

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Marilyn vos Savant

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

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Blake, William

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

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

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

Garbutt, Frank

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

Ward, William A.

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

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.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

12.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

13.

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

Francis of Assisi, St.

14.

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

15.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

16.

Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.

Ziggy

17.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

18.

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

19.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

20.

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

Marx, Eleanor

21.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

22.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

23.

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

Young, Andrew

24.

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

25.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

26.

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

Proverb, Chinese

27.

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.

28.

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

Proverb, Camerounian

29.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

30.

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

Saroyan, William

31.

The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.

Boileau, Nicholas

32.

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

33.

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

34.

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

35.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

36.

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

37.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

38.

Inner wisdom is more important than wealth. The more you spend it, the more you gain.

Oprah Winfrey

39.

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

Robbie Gass

40.

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

41.

The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man.

Handey, Jack

42.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

Mencken, H. L.

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

The end result of wisdom is... good deeds.

Talmud, The

46.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

47.

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

Proverb, Spanish

48.

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.