Wisdom

• In seeking wisdom, the first step is silence; the second, listening the third, remembering; the fourth, practicing; the fifth, teaching others. - Ibn Gabirol

• A counsellor who understands proverbs soon sets matters right. - Anonymous

• A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensable. ~ Admiral Richard E. Byrd

• A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom when he can no longer be led by the nose. ~ Mark Twain

• A man may be born to wealth, but wisdom comes only with length of days. - Anonymous

• A man with wisdom is better off than a stupid man with any amount of charms and superstition. - Anonymous

• A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. ~ David Hume

• A wise man will desire no more than what he may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly. ~ Benjamin Franklin

• A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. ~ Francis Bacon

• A word to the wise ain't necessary. It's the stupid ones who need the advice. ~ Bill Cosby

• Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes age comes alone. ~ Unknown

• All human wisdom is summed up in two words - wait and hope. ~ Alexander Dumas

• As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world— that is the myth of the atomic age— as in being able to remake ourselves. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

• Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish. ~ Anne Bradstreet

• Be humble, if thou would'st attain to Wisdom. Be humbler still, when Wisdom thou hast mastered. ~ Helena Petrova Blavatsky

• Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. ~ Jesus Christ (Matthew 10:16)

• 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. ~ Lin Yutang

• Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own. ~ Aesop

• 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

• Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. ~ Elbert Hubbard

• For as it is the chief concern of wise men to retrench the evils of life by the reasonings of philosophy; it is the employment of fools to multiply them by the sentiments of superstition. ~ Joseph Addison

• He's a fool who cannot conceal his wisdom. ~ Benjamin Franklin

• Honesty is the first chapter in the Book of wisdom. Let it be our endeavor to merit the character of a just nation. ~ Thomas Jefferson

• Humility is the only true wisdom by which we prepare our minds for all the possible changes of life. ~ George Arliss

• If the only prayer you say in your entire life is 'Thank you', that would suffice. ~ Meister Eckhart

• In that the wisdom of the few becomes available to the many, there is progress in human affairs; without it, the static routine of tradition continues. ~ Jospeh Jastrow

• Information isn't wisdom. Information isn't learning. If information were learning, you could be educated by memorizing the world almanac. If you did that, you wouldn't be educated. You'd be weird ~ David McCullough

• It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish. ~ Aeschylus

• It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own. ~ W. R. Inge

• It is for the wise people who delight in humanity, praise justice, despise their flatterers, and respect the truth. ~ Jeanne-Marie Roland

• 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. ~ Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer in Chaos to Coherence

• It's not what you've been given, it's what you do with what you've got. ~Eddi Reader

• It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

• It is wisdom that is seeking for wisdom. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

• It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. ~ Walter Lippman

• It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition. ~ Carl von Clausewitz

• It takes humility to seek feedback. It takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it, and appropriately act on it. ~ Stephen R. Covey

• Know thyself better than he who speaks of thee. - Anonymous

• Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers ~ Alfred Tennyson

• Knowledge cuts up the world. Wisdom makes it whole. ~ Brazilian proverb

• Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. ~ Jimi Hendrix

• Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion. ~ William Godwin

• Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is to you. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives. ~ Abba Eban

• Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. ~ James Boswell

• Men who love wisdom should acquaint themselves with a great many particulars. ~ Heraclitus

• More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

• Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living, the other helps you make a life. ~ Sandra Carey

• Not to know is bad, not to wish to know is worse. ~ Anonymous

• Our live is frittered away by detail.... Simplify, simplify. ~ Henry David Thoreau

• One's first step in wisdom is to question everything— and one's last is to come to terms with everything. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

• Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner. ~ General Omar Bradley

• Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty. ~ Will Durant

• Preconcieved notions are the locks on the door to wisdom. ~ Merry Browne

• Re-examine all you have been told . . . Dismiss what insults your Soul. ~ Walt Whitman

• Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. ~ Immanuel Kant

• Some folk are wise, and some are otherwise. ~ Tobias Smollett

• The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man. ~ Euripides

• The biggest difficulty with mankind today is that our knowledge has increased so much faster than our wisdom ~ Frank Whitmore

• The fool wonders, the wise man asks. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

• The most basic inherent constraint is that neither time nor wisdom are free goods available in unlimited quantity. This means that in social processes, as in economic processes, it is not only impossible to attain perfection but irrational to seek perfection— or even to seek the "best possible" result in each separate instance. ~ Thomas Sowell

• The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. ~ H. L. Mencken

• The plainest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness: her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene. ~ Michel de Montaigne
  • • Variant: The highest of wisdom is continual cheerfulness: such a state, like the region above the moon, is always clear and serene.

• The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials. ~ Lin Yutang

• The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations. ~ Isaac D'Israeli

• The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way. ~ Eric Hoffer

• The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions. ~ Claude Levi-Strauss

• The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things. ~ William Ralph Inge

• The wisest mind has something yet to learn. ~ George Santayana

• There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom. ~ Democritus

• There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom. ~ Francis Bacon

• The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook. ~ William James (1842-1910)

• Time ripens all things; no man is born wise. ~ Miguel de Cervantes

• To act with common sense according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know and the best philosophy is to do one's duties, take the world as it comes submit respectfully to one's lot; bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is; and despise affectation. ~ Horace Walpole

• To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

• To keep your secret is wisdom; to expect others to keep it is folly. ~ Samuel Johnson

• To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish. ~ Euripides

• Truth never plays false roles of any kind, which is why people are so surprised when meeting it. Everyone must decide whether he wants the uncompromising truth or a counterfeit version of truth. Real wisdom consists of recommending the truth to yourself at every opportunity. ~ Vernon Howard

• Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong. ~ Lao Zi (Lao-Tzu)

• We judge of man's wisdom by his hope. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

• We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it— and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again— and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. ~ Mark Twain

• When you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wiser. ~ Whittaker Chambers

• Wisdom: acting on what knowledge you have. ~ Zach Zeisler

• Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart Must hold both sisters, never seen apart. ~ William Cowper

• Wisdom begins in wonder. ~ Socrates
  • Variant: Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

• Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it. ~ David Starr Jordan

• Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it. ~ Albert Einstein

• Wisdom is the daughter of experience. ~ Leonardo da Vinci

• Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness. ~ Sophocles

• Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately. ~ Matthew Henry

• Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible. ~ Eric Hoffer

• Wise men hear and see as little children do. ~ Lao-Tzu

• Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. ~ Cato