Wisdom Quotes

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Doing what's right isn't the problem. It is knowing what's right
Lyndon B. Johnson

A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare

A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.
Robert Heinlein /Stranger in a Strange Land/

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
Francis Bacon

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
Baltasar Gracian

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

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

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.
Clifford Stoll

Deep doubts, deep wisdom; small doubts, little wisdom.
Chinese Proverb

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists of not exceeding that limit.
Elbert Hubbard

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
Albert Einstein

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr

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

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.
Lao Tzu

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
Socrates

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
Voltaire

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.
Terry Pratchett

Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more.
William Cowper

Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.
Juvenal /Satires /

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.
John Irving /A Son of the Circus/

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Socrates

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
Thomas Szasz

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
A. A. Milne

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
Oscar Wilde

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
Niccolo Machiavelli

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
Leonardo da Vinci

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
Logan P. Smith

To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it.
Wilson Mizner

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Winston Churchill

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.
Marcel Proust

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.
William Blake

Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it.
Doug Larson

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
Plato

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.
Baltasar Gracian