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Quotes about wisdom

352 quotes from 209 people

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The disease having been caused by allowing cleverness to displace wisdom, no amount of clever research is likely to produce a cure.
ESE. F. Schumacher1911–1977Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973), p. 35.
- Intelligence
Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.
Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
It’s a terrible thing to be alone — yes it is — it is — but don’t lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath — as terrible as you like — but a mask.
Katherine Mansfield1888–1923Letter to her future husband, John Middleton Murry (July 1917), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. I
- Advice
Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another’s dogmatism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Literary Ethics (1838)
- Advice
- Thinking
The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong.
Karl Popper1902–1994On Freedom (1958)
- Debate
Let your desires be ruled by reason.
Cicero107–43 BCDe Officiis (44 BC), Book I, section 141
To the quiet mind all things are possible.
Meister Eckhart1260–1328As translated in A Dazzling Darkness: An Anthology of Western Mysticism (1985) by Patrick Grant
Force has no place where there is need of skill.
Herodotus484–425 BCThe Histories, Book 3, Ch. 127.
No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Erica Jongborn 1942“Blood and Guts: The Tricky Problem of Being a Woman Writer in the Late Twentieth Century”
It’s a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.
Isaac Asimov1920–1992Foundation (1951), Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 18
Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
J. M. Barrie1860–1937Rectorial Address, St. Andrew’s (3 May 1922)
- Advice
- Enemies
It is no weakness for the wisest man
To learn when he is wrong.
Sophocles496–406 BCAntigone, Lines 710–711 (tr. E. F. Watling, 1947)
The owl of Minerva first begins her flight with the onset of dusk.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel1770–1831Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820/1821)
- Philosophy
The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.
William Hazlitt1778–1830“Common Places,” No. 1, The Literary Examiner (September—December 1823), reprinted in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt (1902-1904)
- Happiness
It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.
Gertrude Stein1874–1946“What Is English Literature?” (1935)
- Advice