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Quotes about wisdom

352 quotes from 209 people

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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. Eliot1888–1965Choruses from The Rock (1934), I
- Knowledge
Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish… Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.
Hermann Hesse1877–1962Siddhartha (1922)
- Knowledge
If you get the message, hang up the phone.
Alan Watts1915–1973The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness (1962), p. 26 (This statement was redacted from later editions.)
- Advice
Once a thing has been done, the fool sees it.
Homer900–800 BCIliad, XVII. 32 (tr. Richmond Lattimore); Menelaus to Euphorbus
And he is oft the wisest man
Who is not wise at all.
William Wordsworth1770–1850The Oak and the Broom: A Pastoral (Lyrical Ballads, 1800), the Broom’s reply to the Oak
Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Stanza 124
Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind.
Helen Keller1880–1968Three Days to See (1933)
- Advice
We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.
Audre Lorde1934–1992Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), “Notes from a Trip to Russia”, p. 31
Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life
But needs it, and may learn.
Philip James Bailey1816–1902Festus (1839)
- Virtue
Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988Glory Road (1963)
There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
- Advice
- Morality
The sage wears coarse clothing over his shoulders, but carries jade within his bosom.
LLaozi580–501 BCTao Te Ching, Ch. 70
There are more fools than wise men, and even in a wise man there is more folly than wisdom.
Nicolas Chamfort1740–1794Maximes et Pensées, #149
My advice to myself and to everyone else, particularly young people, is to turn on, tune in and drop out.
Timothy Leary1920–1996The Politics of Ecstasy (1968)
- Advice
- Youth
Rather than reacting to every risk we hear and see, we should make an effort to discern which ones we can do something about.
Ben Carsonborn 1951Take The Risk (2008), p. 58
- Advice
- Risk