Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Marilyn vos Savant

Best Quotes about Wisdom

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

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

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

Cheever, John

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

Cato The Elder

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

Talmud, The

10.

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

Aristophanes

11.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

12.

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

Saroyan, William

13.

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

Mencken, H. L.

14.

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

15.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

16.

Follow then the shining ones, the wise, the awakened, the loving, for they know how to work and forbear.

Buddha

17.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

18.

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

19.

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

Levenson, Samuel

20.

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

21.

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

Cocteau, Jean

22.

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

Kraus, Karl

23.

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

Thurber, James

24.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

25.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

26.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

27.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

28.

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

Quintilian

29.

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.

30.

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

31.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

35.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

36.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

37.

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

38.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

39.

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

Proverb, Turkish

40.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

41.

Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings.

Gabirol, Ibn

42.

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

43.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

44.

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

Evangel

45.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

46.

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

Garbutt, Frank

47.

It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

48.

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

49.

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

Confucius

50.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De