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Wisdom Quotes

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings - they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong.
– Norman Douglas
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Your law may be perfect, your knowledge of human affairs may be such as to enable you to apply it with wisdom and skill, and yet without individual acquaintance with men, their haunts and habits, the pursuit of the profession becomes difficult, slow, and expensive.
– William Dunbar
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The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
– Albert Einstein
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The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.
– George Eliot
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More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
– George Eliot
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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?
– T. S. Eliot
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Men who know themselves are no longer fools. They stand on the threshold of the door of Wisdom.
– Henry Ellis
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Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.
– Paul Engle
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It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.
– Epictetus
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Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.
– Epicurus
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It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn't have it, to fear and suspect the worst.
– Desiderius Erasmus
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Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.
– Euripides
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Cleverness is not wisdom.
– Euripides
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Silence is true wisdom's best reply.
– Euripides
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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.
– William Feather
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Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
– Henry Ford
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I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.
– Anatole France
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Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
– Anatole France
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Honesty is the best policy.
– Benjamin Franklin
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The doors of wisdom are never shut.
– Benjamin Franklin
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The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
– Benjamin Franklin
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There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
– Benjamin Franklin
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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.
– Benjamin Franklin
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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
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The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.
– Robert Frost
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Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.
– Margaret Fuller
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He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.
– Edgar R. Fiedler
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Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
– Dr. Martin Henry Fischer
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Wisdom sails with wind and time.
– John Florio
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The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.
– Solomon Ibn Gabirol
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One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.
– John Kenneth Galbraith
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The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
– John Kenneth Galbraith
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It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
– James A. Garfield
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Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.
– Elizabeth Gaskell
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It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.
– Harold S. Geneen
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Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps.
– Elizabeth George
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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
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Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.
– Kahlil Gibran
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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.
– Kahlil Gibran
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Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.
– Kahlil Gibran
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The future has already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet.
– William Gibson
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Education makes us more stupid than the brutes. A thousand voices call to us on every hand, but our ears are stopped with wisdom.
– Jean Giraudoux
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Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Wisdom is found only in truth.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Surely, God on high has not refused to give us enough wisdom to find ways to bring us an improvement in relations between the two great nations on earth.
– Mikhail Gorbachev
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Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.
– Baltasar Gracian
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A mistake is simply another way of doing things.
– Katharine Graham
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There's a beauty to wisdom and experience that cannot be faked. It's impossible to be mature without having lived.
– Amy Grant
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Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
– Graham Greene
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I acknowledge the privilege of being alive in a human body at this moment, endowed with senses, memories, emotions, thoughts, and the space of mind in its wisdom aspect.
– Alex Grey
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Courage is always the surest wisdom.
– Sir Wilfred Grenfell
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We are to seek wisdom and understanding only in the length of days.
– Robert Hall
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The thing that we possess, that machines don't, is the ability to exhibit wisdom.
– Herbie Hancock
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Without wisdom, the future has no meaning, no valuable purpose.
– Herbie Hancock
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You can practice to attain knowledge, but you can't practice to attain wisdom.
– Herbie Hancock
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Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.
– Elizabeth Hardwick
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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 it be obeyed.
– Nathaniel Hawthorne
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We all admire the wisdom of people who come to us for advice.
– Sir Arthur Helps
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Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.
– Sir Arthur Helps
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Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
– Jimi Hendrix
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As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.
– Ben Hogan
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The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.
– Bell Hooks
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Repeat anything often enough and it will start to become you.
– Tom Hopkins
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A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.
– Horace
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Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.
– Horace
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Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.
– Elbert Hubbard
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Wisdom is a sacred communion.
– Victor Hugo
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However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.
– Wilhelm von Humboldt
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The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.
– Thomas Henry Huxley
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Wisdom is a kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of the nature, career, and consequences of human values.
– Sidney Hook
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He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.
– James Gibbons Huneker
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Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means.
– Francis Hutcheson
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It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.
– William Ralph Inge
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Of all our possessions, wisdom alone is imortal.
– Isocrates
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Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.
– Juvenal
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I look forward to a great future for America - a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
– John F. Kennedy
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The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.
– John F. Kennedy
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When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
– John F. Kennedy
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Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.
– Robert Francis Kennedy
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Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
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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.
– Paul Klee
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Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.
– Karl Kraus
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It's better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.
– Elizabeth Kenny
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Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race.
– Stanley Kunitz
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Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it.
– Doug Larson
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Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk.
– Doug Larson
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The war... was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.
– General Robert E. Lee
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We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.
– Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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Enraging liberals is simply one of the more enjoyable side effects of my wisdom.
– Rush Limbaugh
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He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty.
– Mary Wilson Little
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Winners never quit and quitters never win.
– Vince Lombardi
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