Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Mencken, H. L.

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

The wise man says it cannot be done, but the fool goes and does it.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

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

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

Levenson, Samuel

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

Thurber, James

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.

Rowland, Helen

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

Cato The Elder

10.

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

Epictetus

11.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

12.

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

Larson, Doug

13.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

14.

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

Twain, Mark

15.

Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually marked by an ill placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

16.

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

Talmud, The

17.

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

18.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

19.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

20.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

21.

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

22.

Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning.

Evans, Bergen

23.

It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

Maeterlinck, Maurice

24.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

25.

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

26.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

27.

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

28.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

29.

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

30.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

31.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

32.

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

33.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month's study of books.

Proverb, Chinese

34.

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

Garbutt, Frank

35.

Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.

Robbie Gass

36.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

37.

The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.

Aurelius, Marcus

38.

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

39.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

40.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

41.

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

Proverb, Turkish

42.

Wisdom is better than weapons of war. [9:18b, Ecclesiastes]

Bible

43.

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

44.

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

Francis of Assisi, St.

45.

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

46.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

47.

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

Socrates

48.

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

Butler, Samuel

49.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

50.

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