Wisdom Quotes

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.

David Starr Jordan, The Philosophy of Despai

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

The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason

Above all, we must abolish hope in the heart of man. A calm despair, without angry convulsions, without reproaches to Heaven, is the essence of wisdom.

Alfred Victor Vigny

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living the other helps you make a life.

Sandra Carey

Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.

Chuang - Tzu, On Leveling All Things

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.

Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means.

Francis Hutcheson

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.

Jimi Hendrix

Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.

Bill Clinton, 2004 democratic convention speech

How terrible it is to have wisdom when it does not benefit those who have it.

Sophocles, Tiresias. Oedipus the King 315

In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.

Louis D. Brandeis

The Scripture vouches Solomon for the wisest of men; and his proverbs prove him so, The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame each of them by a single sentence, consisting of two or three words.

South

He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.

Mary Howitt

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.

Honore De Balzac

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.

Joseph Addison

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

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

Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

Dr. Dale E. Turne

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.

Buddha

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus, Trinummus