Wisdom Quotes

The seat of knowledge is in the head of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.
– William Hazlitt
The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
– Sir William Osler
The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.
– Sam Mendes
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
– H. L. Mencken
The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.
– Milan Kundera
The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom to serve all, but love only one.
– Honore de Balzac
The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life's wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.
– Herman Hesse
The key to wisdom is this - constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.
– Peter Abelard
The greater the step forward in knowledge, the greater is the one taken backward in search of wisdom.
– Stephen Gardiner
The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education.
– John Updike
The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.
– Samuel Smiles
The Divine of the Lord in heaven is love, for the reason that love is receptive of all things of heaven, such as peace, intelligence, wisdom and happiness.
– Emanuel Swedenborg
The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.
– Joseph Smith, Jr.
The arts, quite simply, nourish the soul. They sustain, comfort, inspire. There is nothing like that exquisite moment when you first discover the beauty of connecting with others in celebration of larger ideals and shared wisdom.
– Gordon Gee
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
– Walter Benjamin
The all-seeing eye of God beheld our deplorable state infinite pity touched the heart of the Father of mercies and infinite wisdom laid the plan of our recovery.
– David Brainerd
Teach you children poetry it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.
– Sir Walter Scott
Start with God - the first step in learning is bowing down to God only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning.
– King Solomon
Someday in the distant cyborg future, when our internal and external memories fully merge, we may come to possess infinite knowledge. But that's not the same thing as wisdom.
– Joshua Foer
So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.
– Thomas Jefferson
Second, this epic tale allows the audience to actually listen to the Native Americans and receive their wisdom. Spielberg conveys the respect for Native Americans that is normally lacking in Western films.
– Beau Bridges
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
– Immanuel Kant
Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.
– Aleister Crowley
Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
– Will Durant
Rich people without wisdom and learning are but sheep with golden fleeces.
– Solon
Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.
– Bill Cosby
Putting is like wisdom - partly a natural gift and partly the accumulation of experience.
– Arnold Palmer
Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.
– Samuel Smiles
Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government. But from the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man. Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution.
– Mitt Romney
Peace is a fragile thing. It takes courage to secure it. It takes wisdom to maintain it.
– Jenny Shipley
Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness.
– Sacha Guitry
Our bodies are at once the receiving and transmitting stations for life itself. It is the highest wisdom to recognize this fact and train our bodies to render them sensitive and responsive to nature. art and religion.
– Ruth St. Denis
One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most.
– Walter Pater
Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a participation of that one eternal, immutable and increased wisdom of God.
– Ralph Cudworth
Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.
– Titus Maccius Plautus
No man is the wiser for his learning it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon but wit and wisdom are born with a man.
– John Selden
Never say never, but the thought of electively cutting oneself is beyond my grasp, and I also object to it politically. Denying the lines on our faces makes a comment about age and wisdom I don't care to make.
– Debra Winger
My mom calls me an older soul because, growing up, she taught me stuff real early. Now I spend most of my time chasing wisdom, chasing understanding.
– Ray Lewis
My government, you can be assured, will be less focused on personalities. It is about treating people with respect. I think complaining about the community not being able to see the wisdom of our ideas is the wrong approach.
– Jay Weatherill
My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
– William Tecumseh Sherman
Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom, I suppose also the first announcement of death.
– Peter Conrad
Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions.
– Laurence Sterne
Learning how to get in tune with your field of energy and understand how to create your energy, expand that energy, and move that energy through your body. Coming back to your center, and approaching life from that center-to-line place... That to me gave me strength and understanding and hopefully wisdom to solve life's problems and challenges.
– Erin Gray
Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.
– Alfred North Whitehead
Knowledge is the consequence of time, and multitude of days are fittest to teach wisdom.
– Jeremy Collier
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
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
– Walter Lippmann
It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.
– Dee Hock
In youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare!
– Homer
In societies where mature workers are respected and where their wisdom is respected, everybody benefits. Workers are more engaged and productive. Their health is better. They live longer.
– Deepak Chopra
In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them.
– Thomas Huxley
In particular, for younger researchers on whom the future of mankind may depend. We believe that they are working with all the scientific wisdom at their disposal for the preservation of the inheritance of the earth and for the lasting survival of mankind.
– Kenichi Fukui
In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.
– Lucille Ball
In garden arrangement, as in all other kinds of decorative work, one has not only to acquire a knowledge of what to do, but also to gain some wisdom in perceiving what it is well to let alone.
– Gertrude Jekyll
In complete darkness, it is only knowledge and wisdom that separates us.
– Janet Jackson
In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.
– Janet Jackson
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
– Henry David Thoreau
If you have the guts to keep making mistakes, your wisdom and intelligence leap forward with huge momentum.
– Holly Near
I've led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss and debate every aspect of our law and legal system. And what I've learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I've learned that we make progress by listening to each other, across every apparent political or ideological divide.
– Elena Kagan
I'm very accepting with my age. It's like notches on your belt: experience, wisdom, and a different kind of beauty. There comes a day when you've become comfortable in your skin.
– Zoe Saldana
I'm married. My wife, Stella - a beautiful woman. She's brought a lot of peace to my life, a lot of wisdom.
– Anthony Hopkins
I'll come to you with gifts of knowledge, wisdom and truth.
– Barry White
I sought my father in the world of the black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men.
– Eric Clapton
I love the music of Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu and more recently the music of Laura Marling. All these women share a strength and a wisdom in their voices and music that really makes me want to make music and sing.
– Lianne La Havas
I love being. There's so much wisdom in it. You wake up in the morning and you think, Hey, isn't it great just being?
– Gwyneth Paltrow
I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship.
– Pietro Aretino
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
– Thomas Jefferson
I have the responsibility of over four million people, and I am in a position to do good, to be able to bring about a new life for my people, and I will continue to move in that direction. It's a burden, but it needs to be done, and you have to have the courage and wisdom to see it through.
– King Abdullah II
I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of life's wisdom.
– Wislawa Szymborska
I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
– Hippolyte Taine
I have no wisdom to share on dating.
– Rachel Dratch
I have no agenda except to be funny. Neither I or the writers profess to offer any worldly wisdom.
– Julia Louis Dreyfus
I gave my beauty and my youth to men. I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals.
– Brigitte Bardot
However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
History is filled with tragic examples of wars that result from diplomatic impasse. Whether in our local communities or in international relations, the skillful use of our communicative capacities to negotiate and resolve differences is the first evidence of human wisdom.
– Daisaku Ikeda
God the Father, the supreme Architect, had already built this cosmic home we behold, the most sacred temple of His godhead, by the laws of His mysterious wisdom.
– Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
God in His wisdom has decided that He will reward no works but His own.
– Johannes Tauler
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
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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
Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
– Ambrose Bierce
Every day, every birthday candle I blow out, every penny I throw over my shoulder in a wishing well, every time my daughter says, 'Let's make a wish on a star,' there's one thing I wish for: wisdom.
– Rene Russo
Even when you have doubts, take that step. Take chances. Mistakes are never a failure - they can be turned into wisdom.
– Cat Cora
During the long process of history, by relying on our own diligence, courage and wisdom, Chinese people have opened up a good and beautiful home where all ethnic groups live in harmony and fostered an excellent culture that never fades.
– Xi Jinping
Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.
– Clifford Stoll
Conventional wisdom on government's role in inequality often has it backwards. Tax reforms have resulted in a more progressive federal income tax government transfer payments have become less progressive.
– Paul Ryan
Community organizing is all about building grassroots support. It's about identifying the people around you with whom you can create a common, passionate cause. And it's about ignoring the conventional wisdom of company politics and instead playing the game by very different rules.
– Tom Peters
Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of 'em: wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation, and let father Time shake his glass.
– William Congreve
Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.
– Alice Walker
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
Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying.
– Johannes Tauler
As you walk in God's divine wisdom, you will surely begin to see a greater measure of victory and good success in your life.
– Joseph Prince
And I pray thee, loving Jesus, that as Thou hast graciously given me to drink in with delight the words of Thy knowledge, so Thou wouldst mercifully grant me to attain one day to Thee, the fountain of all wisdom and to appear forever before Thy face.
– Venerable Bede
And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we're all sweating it - when we're worried that the bill won't pass, and it seems like all is lost - Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward... with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.
– Michelle Obama
Age is a terrible avenger. The lessons of life give you so much to work with, but by the time you've got all this great wisdom, you don't get to be young anymore.
– Elizabeth Wurtzel
Age does not bring you wisdom, age brings you wrinkles.
– Estelle Getty
After the knowledge of, and obedience to, the will of God, the next aim must be to know something of His attributes of wisdom, power, and goodness as evidenced by His handiwork.
– James Prescott Joule
After 25-plus years as a lawyer, prosecutor, and defense attorney, I have developed a deep appreciation for both the wisdom of the law and the role that jurists play in framing the rights and responsibilities that define our society.
– Eliot Spitzer
A man of strength and wisdom, John Paul became an inspiration to generations of both Catholics and non-Catholics throughout the world by encouraging freedom, promoting peace and respecting all faiths.
– Greg Walden