Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.

- Cullen Hightower

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

Thurber, James

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

Larson, Doug

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

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

Socrates

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise. [Proverbs 15: 31]

Bible

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

15.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

16.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

17.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

18.

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

19.

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Clemenceau, Georges

20.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

21.

Timing, degree and conviction are the three wise men in this life.

Fitzhenry, R. I.

22.

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

Cato The Elder

23.

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

24.

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

Basho, Matsuo

25.

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .

26.

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

27.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

28.

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

29.

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

Bible

30.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

Sophocles

31.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

32.

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

33.

True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.

Bouton, E. S.

34.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

35.

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

Levenson, Samuel

36.

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

Pindar

37.

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

Proverb, Turkish

38.

Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

39.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

40.

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

41.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

42.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

43.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

44.

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.

45.

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

46.

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

Cocteau, Jean

47.

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

Epictetus

48.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

49.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.