Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

- Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

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

Brecht, Bertolt

The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.

Proverb, Camerounian

By the time your life is finished, you will have learned just enough to begin it well.

Marx, Eleanor

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed Wisdom. And then I know exactly what is going to follow: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

11.

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

Levenson, Samuel

12.

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

13.

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

Garbutt, Frank

14.

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

15.

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

Proverb, Chinese

16.

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

Fitzhenry, R. I.

17.

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

18.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

19.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

20.

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

Bible

21.

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

Socrates

22.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

23.

The wisdom of a learned man comet by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. [Ecclesiasticus 38:25]

Bible

24.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

25.

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

Epictetus

26.

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

Quintilian

27.

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.

28.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

29.

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

Saroyan, William

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Inner wisdom is more important than wealth. The more you spend it, the more you gain.

Oprah Winfrey

33.

Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.

Ziggy

34.

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

35.

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

Bible

36.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

37.

Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.

Walt Whitman

38.

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

39.

As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.

Buddha

40.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

41.

The foolish sayings of a rich man pass for wise ones.

Proverb, Spanish

42.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

43.

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

Elizabeth, Queen

44.

If you wish to know the road up the mountain, ask the man who goes back and forth on it.

Zenrin

45.

Wisdom is perishable. Unlike information or knowledge, it cannot be stored in a computer or recorded in a book. It expires with each passing generation.

Taylor, Sid

46.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

47.

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

48.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

49.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.