wisdom quotes

Alex Noble: 

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.

Andre Gide: 

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

Baltasar Gracian: 

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.

Cicero: 

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: 

To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.

Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman: 

It is no longer enough to be smart -- all the technological tools in the world add meaning and value only if they enhance our core values, the deepest part of our heart. Acquiring knowledge is no guarantee of practical, useful application. Wisdom implies a mature integration of appropriate knowledge, a seasoned ability to filter the inessential from the essential.

Edith Wharton: 

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.

Elbert Hubbard: 

To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox: 

The truest greatness lies in being kind, the truest wisdom in a happy mind.

Georg C. Lichtenberg: 

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

George Bernard Shaw: 

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

George Bernard Shaw: 

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

George Burns: 

Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.

George Santayana: 

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

Groucho Marx: 

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

Helen Keller: 

I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

Henry David Thoreau: 

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.

Henry David Thoreau: 

It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Immanuel Kant: 

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant: 

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Isaac D'Israeli: 

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations.

J. Michael Straczynski: 

The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language.

John Naisbitt: 

Strategic planning is worthless -- unless there is first a strategic vision.

Jonathan Kozol: 

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. On Being a Teacher

Kalidasa: 

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the 
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes 
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Lin Yutang: 

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Marcel Proust: 

The stellar universe is not so difficult of comprehension as the real actions of other people.

Mark Twain: 

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

Mark Twain - attributed in error: 

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Marlene Dietrich: 

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognizably wiser than oneself.

Martin Fischer: 

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

Mary Catherine Bateson: 

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

Norman Cousins: 

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

Norman Cousins: 

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

Oprah Winfrey: 

Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself.

Pierre Abelard: 

The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.

Proverbs 17:28: 

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

Rachel Carson: 

If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.

Robert Green Ingersoll: 

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

Robert Heinlein: 

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.

Robert Louis Stevenson: 

Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. 

Sam Levenson: 

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

Sam Levenson: 

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it.

Samuel Johnson: 

Memory is the mother of all wisdom. 

Samuel Smiles : 

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Sophocles: 

A short saying often contains much wisdom.

Sophocles: 

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Stephen Covey: 

Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.

Stephen Sigmund: 

Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations will never become a strong productive plant.

Stephen Vincent Benét: 

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.

Sydney J. Harris: 

An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

Theodore Roosevelt: 

Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.

Theodore Rubin: 

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.

Thomas Jefferson: 

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Tryon Edwards: 

He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.

Umberto Eco: 

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

Vernon Cooper: 

These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

Wallace Stegner: 

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

William Golding: 

Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.

William Menninger: 

Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity.

William Saroyan: 

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