Famous Wisdom Quotations

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"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."
by Aeschylus
"I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean."
by Socrates
"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."
by Charlie Parker
"Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without."
by Henry David Thoreau
"The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it."
by William Faulkner
"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
by Bertrand Russell
"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."
by Marilyn vos Savant
"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
by Oscar Wilde
"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never learned to walk."
by Franklin D. Roosevelt
"A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time."
by Alfred E. Wiggam
"A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election."
by Bill Vaughan
"The best mind might be the wisest mind if it were a mind alone that produces wisdom."
by Source Unknown
"A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything"
by African Proverbs
"A wise man is he who does not grieve for the thing which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has."
by Epictetus
"A prudent question is one-half of wisdom."
by Francis Bacon
"The conventional wisdom going into the hearings for (high court nominees Clarence) Thomas and (Robert) Bork was that they were going to get confirmed. One (Thomas) was barely confirmed, and the other was resoundingly defeated."
by Ralph Neas
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."
by George Bernard Shaw
"The difficulty in life is the choice."
by George Moore
"The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been."
by Alan Ashley-Pitt
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
by Mark Twain
"The lips of the righteous feed many: but fools die for want of wisdom."
by Anonymous
"The light that cometh from her (wisdom) never goeth out"
by Solomon Ibn
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
by Oscar Wilde
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
by Socrates
"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way."
by Bertrand Russell
"The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness."
by Michel de Montaigne
"The purpose of life is a life of purpose."
by Robert Byrne
"The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them."
by Anonymous
"The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple. [Psalms 19:7]"
by Anonymous
"The wise man avoids evil by anticipating it."
by Publilius Syrus
"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations."
by William Feather
"The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason."
by Hal Borland
"Then Daniel answered with counsel and wisdom to Arioch the captain of the king's guard, which was gone forth to slay the wise men of Babylon: / He answered and said to Arioch the king's captain, Why is the decree so hasty from the king? Then Arioch made the thing known to Daniel."
by Anonymous
"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."
by Dolly Parton
"The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom."
by Aristotle
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
by Albert Einstein
"There are no facts, only interpretations"
by Friedrich nietzsche
"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
by Arthur C. Clarke
"There is nothing more satisfying than being able to understand."
by Greg Evans
"There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result."
by Winston Churchill
"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."
by W. M. L. Jay
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
by John F. Kennedy
"Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion."
by Benjamin Franklin
"This thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down."
by Mary Pickford
"Time ripens all things; no man is born wise."
by Miguel de Cervantes
"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
by Benjamin Franklin
"To know when to be generous and when firm -- this is wisdom."
by Edgar Watson
"To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly."
by Samuel Johnson
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
by Mark Twain
"Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough."
by William Saroyan
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
by Anais Nin
"We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much."
by Ronald Reagan
"We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom."
by Michel de Montaigne
"We love the guy to death. He's a great coach and a great mind. He's done so much for this defense and helped us out tremendously with his wisdom and knowledge. When he puts together a game plan we feel like, if we execute it, we have a great chance to win the game."
by James Farrior
"We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom."
by Stephen Vincent Benet
"What of this world but joys and sorrows."
by Greg Evans
"Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know."
by Socrates
"What we see is mainly what we look for."
by Anonymous
"What is conventional wisdom? Who created conventional wisdom in the first place? It's just something we've been doing for a long period of time, and while the game is the same, the game has changed in other ways. If you have enough information, you might be able to take some chance based on the information."
by Joe Maddon
"What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? But the man who orders his life according to their teachings cannot go far wrong"
by George Douglas
"What does rasta mean? Righteousness."
by Anonymous
"When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power."
by Hugh White
"Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens."
by Anonymous
"While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery."
by Anonymous
"Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt."
by St. Francis
"Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance."
by St. Francis
"With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity."
by Keshavan Nair
"Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people."
by Anonymous
"Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late."
by Felix Frankfurter
"Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late"
by Felix Frankfurter
"Wisdom never lies"
by Homer Homer
"Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness."
by Sophocles
"Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone."
by Horace
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it."
by Anonymous
"Wisdom is learning what to overlook."
by Anonymous
"Wisdom is knowledge which has become a part of one's being."
by Orison Swett Marden
"Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly."
by Anonymous
"Wisdom comes alone through suffering."
by Aeschylus
"Wisdom begins in wonder."
by Socrates
"You can't always see things for what it is if you just stare at it, sometimes you have to step back, look at things from a different perspective and ask questions."
by Leonardo Ruiz
"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
by Naguib Mahfouz
"You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself."
by Beryl Markham
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it."
by George Santayana
"And having wisdom with each studious year, in meditation dwelt, with learning wrought, and shaped his weapon with an edge severe, sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer."
by Anonymous
"Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them."
by Susan Sontag
"As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing."
by Francois de la Rochefoucauld
"Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass."
by Joseph Addison
"Books should to one of these fours ends conduce, for wisdom, piety, delight, or use."
by Sir John Denham
"Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well."
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."
by David Lloyd George
"Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said."
by Jean Rostand
"Everything we enjoy in society is a direct result of the accumulated learning derived from millions of mistakes. No mistakes, no progress. Yet we still look at making a mistake as embarrassing, wrong, an act bordering on sin. If youre making mistakes, it means youre doing new things, taking risks, stretching yourself. Youre growing, learning. And isn't the journey, the experience, not the destination, what life is all about?"
by Robert White
"Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed."
by Anonymous
"Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong."
by John G. Riefenbaker
"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
by Oscar Wilde
"He often takes conventional wisdom ... and contradicts it."
by Stan Kasten
"He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly."
by Anonymous
"He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another's mishap."
by Anonymous
"I always return from Africa energized and rejuvenated. Largely because of the African voices -- the wisdom in those voices -- [I'm] energized and invigorated!"
by Chris Johns
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."
by Abba Eban


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