Famous quotes about wisdom

We could all use a little bit of extra wisdom. Learning wisdom from generations that have passed before us have allowed us to become a profitable and successful society. We need wisdom in order to make stronger decisions and to leave behind great future societies for our children.

"All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man." - Henry David Thoreau

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

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are." - John Wooden

"A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her." - Helen Rowland

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." - Confucius

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim; accept no ones definition of your life; define yourself."- Harvey Fierstein

"Cleverness is not wisdom." - Euripides

"A wise man is he who does not grieve for the thing which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." - Epictetus

"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

"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do." - Benjamin Franklin

"Wise men are not always silent, but they know when to be." - Anonymous

"The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way." - Karen S. Magee

"It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own." - William Ralph Inge
"Follow the three R's: Respect for self, respect for others and responsibility for all your actions." - Dali Lama

"There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather." - Martin Luther

"Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time." - Theodore Roosevelt

"Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?" - Friedrich Nietzsche

"LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE "We don't always know what makes us happy." "We know, instead, what we think SHOULD. We are baffled and confused when our attempts at happiness fail...We are mute when it comes to naming accurately our own preferences, delights, gifts, talents. The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people's expectations. The tongue of the original self is the language of the heart." - Julie Cameron

"Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You can buy education, but wisdom is a gift from God. " - Anonymous

"To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. " - Bertrand Russell

"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered; forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives: Be kind anyway. What you spend years creating others could destroy overnight: Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it may never be enough: Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God: it was never between you and them anyway." - Mother Teresa