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Quotes about wisdom

352 quotes from 209 people

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The best way to solve any problem is to remove the cause.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousnes (1960)
- Advice
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever
One grand, sweet song.
Charles Kingsley1819–1875A Farewell (1858)In context
- Advice
- Virtue
The highest form of wisdom is to get drunk and go to pieces.
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936If— (1910)In context
- Advice
- Character
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936The Gods of the Copybook Headings (1919)In context
- History
In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti1895–1986Posthumous publications
The sage wears coarse clothing over his shoulders, but carries jade within his bosom.
LLaozi580–501 BCTao Te Ching, Ch. 70
Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
LLaozi580–501 BCTao Te Ching, Ch. 33, tr. Stephen Mitchell (1988)
- Intelligence
- Power
Every one in the world knows that the soft overcomes the hard, and the weak the strong, but no one is able to carry it out in practice.
LLaozi580–501 BCTao Te Ching (4th century BC), Part II, Chapter 78In context
When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 3 “The Mad King” (p. 42)
- Advice
- Sleep
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
Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water.
Bruce Lee1940–1973Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey (2000); here, Lee was reciting lines he wrote for his short lived role on the TV series Longstreet.
- Advice
- Change
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
Harper Lee1926–2016To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Pt. 1, Ch. 3 (Atticus Finch)
- Advice
When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ‘em.
Harper Lee1926–2016To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Pt. 1, Ch. 9 (Atticus Finch)
- Advice
- Children
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann1889–1974A Preface to Morals (1929), Ch. XV: “The Moralist in an Unbelieving World”, §2, p. 324.