Wisdom can be defined in many different ways. According to Wikipedia,
Wisdom is the ability to contemplate and act productively using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight.
In the pursuit of a meaningful life, wisdom serves as a guiding light. It just whispers in our hearts and urges us to make choices in our lives that resonate with the profound truths of life.
In this blog post, we delve into a collection of 98 inspiring quotes about wisdom. These timeless quotes have the power to inspire, provoke thought, and foster a deeper understanding of the complexities of the human experience. Let these words of visionaries and scholars help you unlock the door to the world of wisdom.
Let’s get started.
#1. “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
#2. “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
— Maya Angelou
#3. “If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.”
— Margaret Fuller
#4. “The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.”
— Marcel Pagnol
#5. “Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Skill is knowing how to do it. Virtue is doing it.”
— Thomas Jefferson
#6. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle
#7. “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov
#8. “In a good bookroom, you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain
#9. “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov
#10. “The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”
― Paulo Coelho
#11. “You do not write your life with words…You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”
― Patrick Ness
#12. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi
#13. “There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentleman.”
― Patrick Rothfuss
#14. “We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.”
— Swami Vivekananda
#15. “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.”
— Audrey Hepburn
#16. “Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”
— John Wooden
#17. “We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”
— Marie Curie
#18. “Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure.”
— William Saroyan
#19. “The wise person doesn’t give the right answers, but poses the right questions.”
— Claude Levi-Strauss
#20. “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”
— Socrates
#21. “Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows.”
– Ojibwe Prayer
#22. “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates
#23. “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
— William Arthur Ward
#24. “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
— Michelangelo
#25. “That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
#26. “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
#27. “Just remember the world is not a playground but a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday but an education. One eternal lesson for us all: to teach us how better we should love.”
— Barbra Jordan
#28. “Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.”
— Satchel Paige
#29. “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.”
— John C. Maxwell
#30. “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”
— George S. Patton
#31. “The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#32. “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
— Albert Einstein
#34. “Knowledge is learning something every day. Wisdom is letting go of something every day.”
— Zen Proverb
#35. “Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.”
— Plato
#36. “Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”
— Sandra Carey
#37. “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.”
— Charles Dickens
#38. “Very little is needed to make a happy life, it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
– Marcus Aurelius
#39. “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
– Abraham Lincoln
#40. “Change your thoughts and you change your world.”
– Norman Vincent
#41. “Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.”
— St. John Damascene
#42. “Perhaps instead of bombarding God with requests for what is not, we might try, instead, asking God to open our eyes to see what is.”
— Margaret Silf
#43. “Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”
— Judy Garland
#44. “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.”
— Michael Jordan
#45. “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.”
— Khalil Gibran
#46. “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
— Edith Wharton
#47. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
– Aristotle
#48. “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.”
– Seneca
#49. “Patience is the companion of wisdom.”
— Saint Augustine
#50. “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
– Marcus Aurelius
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#51. “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.”
— Herman Hesse
#52. “Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasure, and you can create for the world a destiny more sublime that ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.”
— Sir Walter Scott
#53. “In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”
– Buddha
#54. “Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.”
— Henry Van Dyke
#55. “Happy is the man who has broken the chains that hurt the mind and has given up worrying once and for all.”
– Ovid
#56. While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us.
– Benjamin Franklin
#57. “What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.”
— Ellen Glasgow
#58. “All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly till they take firm root in our personal experience.”
— Friedrich Wolfgang Von Goethe
#59. “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
#60. “Speakers have been showering us with pearls of wisdom for centuries, and if all of their valuable advice were laid end to end, it would still be just as good as new. Very little of it has ever been used.”
— Benjamin F. Fairless
#61. “For wisdom is a defense, and money is a defense: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.”
— Ecclesiastes
#62. “Such is the nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned, yet they will hardly believe there may be many so wise as themselves.”
— Thomas Hobbes
#63. “Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too self-ful to seek other than itself.”
— Khalil Gibran
#64. “A man doesn’t begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes he is no longer indispensable.”
— Richard E. Byrd
#65. “What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.”
— Wayne Dyer
#66. The wise man learns more from his enemies than the fool does from his friends.
– Benjamin Franklin
#67. The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
#68. “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
— Leo Buscaglia
#69. “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them–that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
— Lao Tzu
#70. “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
— William James
#71. “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.”
— Calvin Coolidge
#72. “When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
#73. “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”
— Jim Rohn
#74. “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
— Henry Ford
#75. “The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”
— Vince Lombardi
#76. “Today is life–the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”
— Dale Carnegie
#77. “When we know how to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the hearts of others.”
— Denis Diderot
#78. “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 while, as glasses being rubbed acquire electric power for a while.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
#79. “True wisdom is to know what is best worth knowing, and to do what is best worth doing.”
— Edward Porter Humphrey
#80. “Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.”
— Thomas Jefferson
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#81. “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
#82. “Don’t give anyone the power to put you down. Haters are losers pretending to be winners.”
— Paulo Coelho
#83. “A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.”
— Gian Carlo Menotti
#84. “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
— Soren Kierkegaard
#85. “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”
— Laozi
#86. “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
— Winston Churchill
#87. “The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.”
— Aristotle
#88. “Don’t depend too much on anyone in this world because even your own shadow leaves you when you are in darkness.”
— Ibn Taymiyyah
#89. “We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn’t. Success often lies just the other side of failure.”
— Leo Buscaglia
#90. “Transformation is a process, and as life happens there are tons of ups and downs. It’s a journey of discovery–there are moments on mountaintops and moments in deep valleys of despair.”
— Rick Warren
#91. “Smart men walked on the moon, daring men walked on the ocean floor, but wise men walk with God.”
— Leonard Ravenhill
#92. “Each person must live their life as a model for others.”
— Rosa Parks
#93. “Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”
— Charles Spurgeon
#94. “Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, practicing patience and being persistent.”
— Billy Graham
#95. “The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.”
— Thomas S. Monson
#96. “Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.”
— ECKHART TOLLE
#97. “To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”
— Marilyn vos Savant
#98. “Your Remedy is within you, but you do not sense it.
Your Sickness is from you, but you do not perceive it.
You Presume you are a small entity,
But within you is enfolded the entire universe.
You are indeed the evident book,
By whose alphabet the hidden becomes the manifest.
Therefore, you have no need to look beyond yourself,
What you seek is within you, if only you reflect.”
— Ali ibn Abi Talib
Final Thoughts
I hope you enjoyed these amazing and beautiful quotes about wisdom.
Wisdom is not merely a collection of words, but a lived experience that unfolds in the conscious choices we make.
So, let these profound words and insights of philosophers, thinkers, and sages serve as a guiding light. This will illuminate the path toward a more thoughtful and meaningful existence.
Would you like to add a few more quotes to this collection? Do let me know in the comments section.