Wisdom

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists of not exceeding the limit. ~~ Elbert Hubbard (see "Said Who")

History's lessons are no more enlightening than the wisdom of those who interpret them. ~~ David Schoenbrun

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom. ~~ Michel de Montaigne

I love tranquil solitude
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good. ~~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is, to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed. ~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: And this, too, shall pass away. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise. ~~ Paul Engle

There is a wisdom of the head, and ... a wisdom of the heart. ~~ Charles Dickens

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 [Earl Russell]

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. ~~ Reinhold Niebuhr

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. ~~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I see no wisdom in saving up indignation for a rainy day. ~~ Heywood Broun

Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have -- so spend it wisely. ~~ Kay Lyons

Life is an error-making and an error-correcting process, and nature in marking man's papers will grade him for wisdom as measured both by survival and by the quality of life of those who survive. ~~ Jonas Salk

Once I had the strength but no wisdom; now I have the wisdom but no strength. ~~ Persian proverb

Adversity makes men wise but not rich. ~~ John Ray

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before ... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. ~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. ~~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly. ~~ Anatole France

Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket," -- which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention," but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and -- watch that basket." ~~ Mark Twain

Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom. ~~ Thomas Jefferson

He who knows others is wise;
He who knows himself is enlightened. ~~ Lao-tzu

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. ~~ William Shakespeare

A man may learn wisdom even from a foe. ~~ Aristophanes

The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies against despots -- suspicion. ~~ Demosthenes

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. ~~ Abba Eban

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of a great sculpture. ~~ Aldous Huxley

Wait for that wisest of counselors, Time. ~~ Pericles

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. ~~ Woody Allen

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

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended. ~~ Alfred North Whitehead

If you command wisely, you'll be obeyed cheerfully. ~~ Thomas Fuller

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. ~~ Sigmund Freud

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 Pearsall Smith

It is always wise, as it is also fair, to test a man by the standards of his own day, and not by those of another. ~~ Odell Shepard

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. ~~ Hugh White

Penny wise, pound foolish. ~~ Robert Burton

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools. ~~ Thomas Hobbes

Be wisely worldly, be not worldly wise. ~~ Francis Quarles

You may use different sorts of sentences and illustrations before different sorts of audiences, but you don't -- if you are wise -- talk down to any audience. ~~ Norman Thomas

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

The man who lives free from folly is not so wise as he thinks. ~~ La Rochefoucauld

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something. ~~ Plato

To judge wisely, we must know how things appear to the unwise. ~~ George Eliot

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. ~~ Chief Luther Standing Bear

The qualities that get a man into power are not those that lead him, once established, to use power wisely. ~~ Lyman Bryson

When one has one's hand full of truth it is not always wise to open it. ~~ French proverb

I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest. ~~ John Buchan

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while. ~~ Albert Einstein

To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it. ~~ John Churton Collins

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world. ~~ Helen Keller

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. ~~ Cicero

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother. ~~ Voltaire

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. ~~ William Butler Yeats

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

If you leave home for a while ... you question the conventional wisdom you've grown up with. That doesn't mean you have to change your opinions or who you are, but it's good to ask the questions. ~~ Molly Ringwald

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. ~~ Walter Lippmann

Science at best is not wisdom; it is knowledge. Wisdom is knowledge tempered with judgment. ~~ Lord Ritchie-Calder

Next time I will ... From now on I will ... What makes me think I am wiser today than I will be tomorrow? ~~ Hugh Prather

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself he becomes wise. ~~ Alden Nowlan

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late. ~~ Felix Frankfurter

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children. ~~ Kahlil Gibran

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves. ~~ Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn

People far prefer happiness to wisdom, but that is like wanting to be immortal without getting older. ~~ Sydney J. Harris

Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself. ~~ Tom Wilson

I endeavor to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended and patient when there be no redress. ~~ Elizabeth Montagu

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

Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn't always have to be their top priority. ~~ William Arthur Ward

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 nonessentials. ~~ Lin Yutang

A country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful. ~~ Primo Levi

If wisdom's ways you wisely seek, five things observe with care: Of whom you speak, to whom you speak, and how and when and where. ~~ Unattributed

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. ~~ Epictetus

Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable. ~~ John Patrick

Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. ~~ Paul Tillich

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. ~~ Marcel Proust

Intelligence is when you spot a flaw in your boss's reasoning. Wisdom is when you refrain from pointing it out. ~~ James Dent

Some folks as they grow older grow wise, but most folks simply grow stubborner. ~~ Josh Billings

It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time. ~~ Laurence Peter

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without. ~~ Unattributed

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus. ~~ Walter Stegner

A sensible man knows you can't please everybody. A wise man knows you can't please anybody. ~~ Richard Needham

The wise man speaks of what he sees, the idiot of what he hears. ~~ Arabic proverb

The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds -- success. ~~ Edmund Burke

Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough. ~~ Lord Chesterfield

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

Our ability to create has outreached our ability to use wisely the products of our invention. ~~ Whitney Moore Young, Jr.

Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity. ~~ Andrew Carnegie

It's a wise man who profits by his own experience, but it's a good deal wiser one who lets the rattlesnake bite the other fellow. ~~ Josh Billings

Wise and prudent men -- intelligent conservatives -- have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing times. ~~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. ~~ William Saroyan

Men are wise in proportion not to their experience but to their capacity for experience. ~~ Samuel Johnson

When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange -- my youth. ~~ Sara Teasdale

Our government sprang from and was made for the people -- not the people for the government. To them it owes an allegiance; from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom. ~~ Andrew Johnson

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. ~~ Bertrand Russell

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

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons. ~~ Robertson Davies

To think ill of mankind, and not to wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue. ~~ William Hazlitt

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as in knowing what to do next. ~~ Herbert Hoover

Some people take more care to hide their wisdom than their folly. ~~ Jonathan Swift

Some of the waiters discuss the menu with you as if they were sharing wisdom picked up in the Himalayas. ~~ Seymour Britchky

There are times when fear is good.
It must keep its watchful place
at the heart's controls. There is
advantage in the wisdom won from pain. ~~ Aeschylus

Fools have a great advantage over the wise: they are always self-satisfied. ~~ Napolean I

The man who knows when not to act is wise. To my mind, bravery is forethought. ~~ Euripides

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

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. ~~ Thomas Carlyle

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people. ~~ James A. Garfield

I love [quotations] because it is a joy to find thoughts you might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognizably wiser than oneself. ~~ Marlene Dietrich

The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right names. ~~ Chinese proverb

It is the part of wisdom to keep your word and the part of folly to count on other people keeping theirs. ~~ Richard Needham

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

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people. ~~ James Abram Garfield

The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself. ~~ Washington Allston

This fellow's wise enough to play the fool,
And to do that well craves a kind of wit. ~~ William Shakespeare

In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago. ~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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