Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Buddha

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

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

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

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

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

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

Marx, Eleanor

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

The extreme limit of wisdom --that's what the public calls madness.

Cocteau, Jean

10.

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

11.

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

12.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

13.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

14.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

16.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

17.

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

Saroyan, William

18.

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

19.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

20.

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

Larson, Doug

21.

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

Evangel

22.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

23.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

24.

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

25.

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

Elizabeth, Queen

26.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

27.

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

28.

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

29.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

30.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

31.

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

32.

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

Levenson, Samuel

33.

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

Basho, Matsuo

34.

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

35.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

36.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

37.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of face within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.

Coolidge, Calvin

38.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

39.

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

Aristophanes

40.

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

41.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

42.

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

Bible

43.

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

44.

Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.

Butler, Samuel

45.

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

46.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

47.

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

Pindar

48.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

49.

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