Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

- Clemenceau, Georges

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser.

Carlyle, Thomas

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

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

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

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

Buddha

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, -- every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.

Marden, Orison Swett

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

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Gibran, Kahlil

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

10.

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

11.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

12.

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

Proverb, Spanish

13.

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

Proverb, Chinese

14.

The wisdom of others remains dull till it is writ over with our own blood. We are essentially apart from the world; it bursts into our consciousness only when it sinks its teeth and nails into us.

Hoffer, Eric

15.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

Sophocles

16.

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

17.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

18.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

19.

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

20.

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

Butler, Samuel

21.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

22.

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

23.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

24.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

25.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

26.

Many people might have attained wisdom had they not assumed they already had it.

27.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

28.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

33.

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

34.

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

Larson, Doug

35.

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

36.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

37.

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

Quintilian

38.

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

Twain, Mark

39.

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.

40.

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Blake, William

41.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

42.

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

Mencken, H. L.

43.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

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.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

Colton, Charles Caleb

46.

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

47.

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

48.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

49.

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

50.

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

Maeterlinck, Maurice