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108 Best Quotes About Wisdom

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

Wisdom is not a product of schooling-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

isdom is what’s left after we’ve run out of personal opinions.

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
Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day

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

Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.

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.

Walter Lippmann

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

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