Wisdom? What is it? How does it define us as persons? Over the centuries, it has been used to denote various characteristics. Wisdom is defined as follow:
1. the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement; the quality of being wise.
2. the fact of being based on sensible or wise thinking.
3. the body of knowledge and experience that develops within a specified society or period.
Societies have always been marked by wisdom. It has been defined by various philosophers, thinkers and institutions. Wisdom has been defined as immortal and it has been referred to as the companion of patience.
Euripides reminded us that Being clever does not mean that one has the wisdom of life.
Confucious stated that wisdom can be learned via three methods: 1) by reflection, 2) by imitation and 3) by experience.
Aristotle believed that wisdom comes in two kinds: Practical and Theoretical. On one side, theoretical wisdom can be taught in such a way that one develop his / her skill. This mastery of a s askill-set is the pre-condition of attaining theoretical wisdom. On the other side, practical wisdom, cannot be acquired. It is a set which include various actions and at the end these actions, successfully executed lead to the acquiring of practical wisdom.
Thus, it is a word which can mean a lot of things from having determination, to having patience and to be able to differentiation between right and wrong. If one can get knowledge from education, reading, learning, wisdom is acquired over time through experience of life.
Go through our quotes about wisdom to find out what various thinkers, philosophers and famous people said about wisdom and what it meant for them.
Best Wisdom Quotes
To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.
Akhenaton
Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but of the life- long attempt to acquire it.
Albert Einstein
The sum of all human wisdom is contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.
Alexander Dumas
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy ax without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
Anne Bradstreet
The doors of wisdom are never shut.
Benjamin Franklin
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell
Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding.
Bible
The temporary good is enemy to the permanent best.
Bill Wilson
Tis sometimes the height of wisdom to feign stupidity.
Cato the Elder
There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.
Charles Dickens
Deep doubts, deep wisdom; small doubts, little wisdom.
Chinese Proverb
It is the province of knowledge to speak, It is the privledge of wisdom to listen.
Christine Lane
Great wisdom is generous petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.
Chuang-tzu
To know that one knows what one knows, and to know that one doesn’t know what one doesn’t know, there lies true wisdom.
Confucius
Behold, my son, with what little wisdom the world is ruled.
Count Axel Gustafson Oxenstierna
An nescis mi fili, quantilla prudentia regitur orbis?
Dost thou not know, my son, with what little wisdom the world is governed?
Count Oxenstierna
Dost thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?
Count Oxenstierna
Wisdom is what’s left after we’ve run out of personal opinions.
Cullen Hightower
Wisdom begins at the end.
Daniel Webster
History’s lessons are no more enlightening than the wisdom of those who interpret them.
David Schoenbrun
Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it.
Doug Larson
Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.
Doug Larson
The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds — success.
Edmund Burke
Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.
Elbert Hubbard
Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
Felix Frankfurter
A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
Francis Bacon
Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?
Friedrich Nietzsche
I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom; I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients.
Gustave Courbet
Be humble, if thou would’st attain to Wisdom. Be humbler still, when Wisdom thou hast mastered.
H Hahn Blavatsky
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
Henry David Thoreau
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.
Henry Miller
A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
Herb Caen
Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
Hermann Hesse
I see no wisdom in saving up indignation for a rainy day.
Heywood
I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
Hippolyte Taine
Mingle some brief folly with your wisdom.
Horace
Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.
Horace
Ignorance of certain subjects is a great part of wisdom.
Hugo De Groot
The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.
Immanuel Kant
Of all possessions wisdom alone is immortal.
Isocrates
He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.
James Gibbons Huneker
Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.
Jane Austen
You are wise to climb Mt. Fuji, but a fool to do it twice.
Japanese Proverb
A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise.
John Henry Cardinal Newman
Accuse not nature, she hath done her partDo thou but thine, and be not diffidentOf wisdom, she deserts thee not, if thouDismiss not her, when most thou needest her nigh,By attributing overmuch to thingsLess excellent, as thou thyself perceivest.
John Milton
That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.
John Stuart Mill
Our experience is composed rathery of illusions that of wisdom acquired.
Joseph Roux
Perhaps we are wiser, less foolish and more far-seeing than we were two hundred years ago. But we are still imperfect in all these things, and since the turn of the century it has been remarked that neither wisdom nor virtue have increased as rapidly as the need for both.
Joseph Wood Krutch
Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.
Josh Billings
Nature never says one thing, Wisdom another.
Juvenal
Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.
Juvenal
Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.
Kahlil Gibran
A person determined never to be wrong won’t likely accomplish much.
Ken Wisdom
Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be.
Lactantius
Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
Laurence Sterne
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 nonessentials.
Lin Yutang
In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it – thou art a fool.
Lord Chesterfield
No man was ever wise by chance.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
We don’t receive wisdom we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take us or spare us.
Marcel Proust
A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose.
Mark Twain
He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.
Mary Howitt
He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty.
Mary Wilson Little
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Turn your wounds into wisdom.
Oprah Winfrey
Wisdom is knowing when you can’t be wise.
Paul Engle
The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practiced, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good.
Pierre Charron
In seeking wisdom thou are wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it thou are a fool.
Rabbi Ben-Azai
Before we acquire great power, we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wisdom is a variable possession. Every man is wise when pursued by a mad dog, fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
Robertson Davies
Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child.
Ron Wild
Common sense in an uncommon degree and is what the world calls wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange – my youth.
Sara Teasdale
These are weighty secrets, and we must whisper them.
Sarah Chauncey Woolsey
The arts are the servant wisdom its master.
Seneca
Some of the waiters discuss the menu with you as if they were sharing wisdom picked up in the Himalayas.
Seymour Britchky
There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom
Sir Francis Bacon
Wisdom begins in wonder.
Socrates
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Socrates
There is no happiness where there is no wisdom No wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, And proud men in old age learn to be wise.
Sophocles
That is true wisdom, to know how to alter one’s mind when occasion demands it.
Terence
Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
Theodore Roosevelt
Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.
Thomas Jefferson
Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.
Tobias Smollett
Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.
Tom Wilson
If wisdom were on sale in the open market, the stupid would not even ask the price.
Unknown
Our wisdom comes usually from our experience, and our experience comes largely from our experience.
Unknown
The best mind might be the wisest mind if it were a mind alone that produces wisdom.
Unknown
Wisdom is a sacred communion.
Victor Hugo
Philosopher A lover of wisdom, which is to say, Truth.
Voltaire
It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.
W. R. Inge
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Walter Stegner
Whosover loveth wisdom is righteous, but he that keepeth company with fowl is weird.
Woody Allen
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.
Benjamin Disraeli
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius
The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.
Dean Inge
Cleverness is not wisdom.
Euripides
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H. L. Mencken
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Henry David Thoreau
The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.
Khalil Gibran
The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.
Napoleon Bonaparte
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Robert Frost
Patience is the companion of wisdom.
Saint Augustine
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann
The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
William Faulkner