Wisdom Quotes

G. k. chesterton - men always talk about the most important things...
Sir john denham - books should to one of these fours ends conduce,...
How terrible it is to have wisdom when it does not benefit those who have it.
Sophocles, Tiresias. Oedipus the King 315
There is a wisdom of the head, and... a wisdom of the heart.
Charles Dickens
Yale is a crucible in American life for the accommodation of intellectual achievement, of wisdom, of refinement, with the democratic ideals of openness, of social justice and of equal opportunity.
Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.
To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.
Horace, Epistles
Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.
Horace, Odes
A man is getting along on the road to wisdom when he begins to realize that his opinion is just an opinion.
Author Unknown
Of all possessions wisdom alone is immortal.
Isocrates
The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds - - Success.
Edmund Burke
More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to utter hopelessness and despair, the other to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
Woody Allen
Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.
Horace
To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.
Plutarch
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Robert Frost
Some of the waiters discuss the menu with you as if they were sharing wisdom picked up in the Himalayas.
Seymour Britchky
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
A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose.
Mark Twain
The best mind might be the wisest mind if it were a mind alone that produces wisdom.
Author Unknown
Many a crown of wisdom is but the golden chamberpot of success, worn with pompous dignity.
Joey Adams
Though a good motive cannot sanction a bad action, a bad motive will always vitiate a good action. In common and trivial matters we may act without motives, but in momentous ones the most careful deliberation is wisdom.
W. M. L. Jay
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.
Benjamin Disraeli
Data is not information, Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not understanding, Understanding is not wisdom.
Cliff Stoll & Gary Schubert
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (1950), "Outline of Intellectual Rubbish".
To know when to be generous and when to be firm - - This is wisdom.
Elbert Hubbard
As the kindled fire consumes the fuel, so in the flame of wisdom the embers of action are burnt to ashes.
Bhagavad Gita
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T. S. Eliot, The Rock
I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Thomas Carlyle
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
Stephen Vincent Benet, Litany for Dictatorships, 1935
Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.
Karl Kraus
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living the other helps you make a life.
Sandra Carey
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
David Starr Jordan, The Philosophy of Despai
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.
Henry Mille
That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.
John Stuart Mill
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 on a hot stove lid again - - And that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Mark Twain
A prudent question is one - Half of wisdom.
Francis Bacon
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have right that these wants should be provided for, including the want of a sufficient restraint upon their passions.
Edmund Burke
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Socrates
Wisdom is perishable. Unlike information or knowledge, it cannot be stored in a computer or recorded in a book. It expires with each passing generation.
Sid Taylo
The experience to be gathered from books, Though often valuable, is but of the nature of learning Whereas the experience gained from actual life, Is of the nature of wisdom And a small store of the latter Is worth vastly more than a stock of the former.
Samuel Smiles
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence... too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.
Thomas Jefferson