Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.

- Watson, Thomas J.

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

Young, Andrew

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness.

Covey, Stephen R.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

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

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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.

Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men.

Talmud, The

12.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

13.

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.

14.

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

Mencken, H. L.

15.

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

Pindar

16.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

17.

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

Robbie Gass

18.

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

Confucius

19.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

20.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

21.

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

Buddha

22.

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

Cato The Elder

23.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

24.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

25.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

26.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

27.

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

Proverb, Chinese

28.

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

29.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

30.

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

Levenson, Samuel

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.

When you move amidst the world of sense, free from attachment and aversion alike, there comes the peace in which all sorrows end, and you life in the wisdom of the Self.

Bhagavad Gita

33.

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

Bible

34.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

35.

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

36.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

37.

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

38.

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

Butler, Samuel

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

James Boswell

42.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

43.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Evans, Bergen

47.

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.

48.

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .

49.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

50.

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

Garbutt, Frank