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Wisdom Quotes

As much as you may hate to admit it, you are only as wise and smart as your gravest act of foolishness. You may think that you are the smartest person in the world, but when you actually do get conned, you are only as smart as what it may have taken to get you hoodwinked. Wisdom does not come easy, it comes with the right kind of experience and the right kind of education. Read on to gain access to famous knowledge/intelligence quotations and sayings.

Richard M. Nixon

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.

Sun
Robert Kennedy

Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.

Tragedy Living
Sigmund Freud

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

Socrates

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Confucius

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.

Action Goals
Lord Byron

Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.

Thomas Hobbes

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.

John F. Kennedy

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

John McCain

Our shared values define us more than our differences. And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust in them again.

Margaret Thatcher

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

Elizabeth Taylor

It's not the having, it's the getting.

Phil Jackson

Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart.

Lao Tzu

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

Will Rogers

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

Thomas Moore

Wisdom and deep intelligence require an honest appreciation of mystery.

John Greenleaf Whittier

You don't always win your battles, but it's good to know you fought.

Xi Jinping

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.

Michael Caine

For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.

Charles Dickens

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

T. S. Eliot

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Lewis Carroll

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

John Greenleaf Whittier

One brave deed makes no hero.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

Nelson Mandela

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

Napoleon Bonaparte

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

Socrates

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Lawrence Peter Berra

If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.

William James

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

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.

Bob Marley

Don't gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

Because you are women, people will force their thinking on you, their boundaries on you. They will tell you how to dress, how to behave, who you can meet and where you can go. Don't live in the shadows of people's judgement. Make your own choices in the light of your own wisdom.

Tina Turner

I'm not wise, but the beginning of wisdom is there; it's like relaxing into - and an acceptance of - things.

Acceptance Wisdom
Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness: a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say 'no.' But saying 'yes' begins things. Saying 'yes' is how things grow.

Dale Carnegie

Applause is a receipt, not a bill.

If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Antonin Scalia

If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.

Jim Carrey

It is better to risk starving to death then surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what's left?

Death Dreams
Josh Brolin

I covered my face because they had taken my wisdom teeth out.

Socrates

Wisdom begins in wonder.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.

Aldous Huxley

Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.

Thomas More

What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Be happy. It's one way of being wise.

William Arthur Ward

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

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.

Isaac Asimov

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

Anton Chekhov

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

Marcel Proust

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

William Gibson

The future has already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet.

Judy Garland

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

Bill Clinton

Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.

Lucille Ball

I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.

Phil Jackson

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Eric Clapton

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.

John D. Rockefeller

Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one's aim.

Life Success Success
Socrates

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Carl Jung

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Anton Chekhov

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.

David Lloyd George

Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.

Walter Scott

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life.

Jimi Hendrix

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.

Audrey Hepburn

For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.

There's a lot of wisdom that my dad and my grandparents and my uncle have been able to impart on me, and what I've treasured the most is I've seen examples in my life of people embracing their creativity, not feeling insecure about their artistic inclinations.

Will Rogers

You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is.

Epictetus

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Theodore Roosevelt

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Catherine the Great

I praise loudly. I blame softly.

Henry Ford

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

Obstacles Eyes
Henry David Thoreau

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

Thomas More

To be educated, a person doesn't have to know much or be informed, but he or she does have to have been exposed vulnerably to the transformative events of an engaged human life.

Epicurus

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.

James M. Barrie

We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.

Benjamin Franklin

When in doubt, don't.

Lucille Ball

In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.

Khalil Gibran

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.

Paul Klee

Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in there having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age.

Age Corruption Children
Arnold Schwarzenegger

Start wide, expand further, and never look back.

Jane Fonda

One part of wisdom is knowing what you don't need anymore and letting it go.

Yoko Ono

Sometimes I am happy and sometimes not. I am, after all, a human being, you know. And I am glad that we are sometimes happy and sometimes not. You get your wisdom working by having different emotions.

Pablo Picasso

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

Oprah Winfrey

Turn your wounds into wisdom.

Charles Dickens

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

Hermann Hesse

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

Epicurus

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

Malcolm X

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.

Anthony Hopkins

I'm married. My wife, Stella - a beautiful woman. She's brought a lot of peace to my life, a lot of wisdom.

Thomas More

If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.

Lawrence Peter Berra

You can observe a lot by watching.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.

Rabindranath Tagore

Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.

Plato

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Joseph Campbell

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

Hermann Hesse

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.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.