Wisdom Quotes

"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."

- Chinese Proverb

"Never did nature say one thing and wisdom another."

- Edmund Burke

"A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it were real, so he escapes suffering."

- Buddha

"He that can compose himself is wiser than he that composes books."

- Benjamin Franklin

"It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them."

- Paulo Coelho

"The wisest of the wise may err."

- Aeschylus

"The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility: and he who knows most knows best how little he knows."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Wisdom at times is found in folly."

- Horace

"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."

- H. L. Mencken

"Wisdom is a good purchase, though we pay dearly for it."

- Dutch Proverb

"Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course."

- William Shakespeare

"Knowledge in youth is wisdom in age."

- Proverb

"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

"All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh."

- Kahlil Gibran

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

- Charles Dickens

"Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"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."

- Hermann Hesse

"The wise are only once betrayed."

- German Proverb

"Wisdom hears one thing and understands three things."

- Chinese Proverb

"Arrogance diminishes wisdom."

- Arabian Proverb

"A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion."

- Chinese Proverb

"Half a man’s wisdom goes with his courage."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody."

- Benjamin Franklin

"The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful, and then only for a short while."

- Albert Einstein

"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations [ahem]."

- Benjamin Disraeli

"When the going gets rough - turn to wonder."

- Parker Palmer

"Speak less, say more."

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

"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."