Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Committing a great truth to memory is admirable; committing it to life is wisdom.

- Ward, William A.

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

Marilyn vos Savant

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

Evangel

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

Evans, Bergen

10.

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

11.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

12.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

13.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

14.

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

Buddha

15.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

16.

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

17.

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

Bible

18.

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

Epictetus

19.

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

Proverb, Chinese

20.

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

Fitzhenry, R. I.

21.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

Sophocles

22.

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

Cheever, John

23.

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

24.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

Committing a great truth to memory is admirable; committing it to life is wisdom.

Ward, William A.

26.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Basho, Matsuo

27.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

28.

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Clemenceau, Georges

29.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

30.

A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning.

Noll, Chuck

31.

The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.

Borland, Hal

32.

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

Bible

33.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

34.

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

Ziggy

35.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

36.

No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, --something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.

Connolly, Cyril

37.

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

Buddha

38.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

39.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

40.

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

Robbie Gass

41.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

42.

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

43.

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

Proverb, Turkish

44.

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

45.

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

46.

The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.

Boileau, Nicholas

47.

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

Butler, Samuel

48.

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

Garbutt, Frank

49.

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

50.

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The