Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

- Gabirol, Ibn

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Confucius

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

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

Proverb, Turkish

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

Bible

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

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

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

Quintilian

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.

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

11.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

12.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

13.

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

14.

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

Elizabeth, Queen

15.

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

16.

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

Cato The Elder

17.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

19.

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

20.

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

21.

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

Talmud, The

22.

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

23.

Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.

Watson, Thomas J.

24.

The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

25.

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

Bouton, E. S.

26.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

27.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

28.

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

Talmud, The

29.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

30.

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

31.

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

Blake, William

32.

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

33.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

34.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

35.

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

Thurber, James

36.

The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.

Carlyle, Thomas

37.

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.

38.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

39.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

40.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

41.

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

42.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

43.

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

Twain, Mark

44.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

45.

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

46.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

47.

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

James Boswell

48.

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

Bible

49.

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.

Blake, William

50.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De