Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

- Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

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

Pindar

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

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

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

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

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

Elizabeth, Queen

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Butler, Samuel

13.

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

Proverb, Turkish

14.

The live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart.

Bhagavad Gita

15.

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

16.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

17.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

18.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

Shaw, George Bernard

19.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

21.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

22.

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

23.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

24.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

25.

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

Proverb, Chinese

26.

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.

27.

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

28.

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

29.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

30.

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

31.

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool.

Azai, Rabbi Ben

32.

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

Confucius

33.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

35.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

36.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

37.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

38.

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

Saroyan, William

39.

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

Cullen Hightower

40.

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.

41.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

42.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

43.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

44.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

45.

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil -- not the strength to choose between the two.

Cheever, John

46.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

47.

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

48.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

49.

A wise man will see to it that his acts always seem voluntary and not done by compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

50.

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

Bible