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Quotes about wisdom

352 quotes from 209 people

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It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.
Gertrude Stein1874–1946“What Is English Literature?” (1935)
- Advice
No one wants advice — only corroboration.
John Steinbeck1902–1968The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part One, Ch. VI
- Advice
A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been avoided by patience and many have been precipitated by reckless haste.
Adlai Stevenson II1900–1965Speeches of Adlai Stevenson (1952), p. 39
- War & Peace
Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them.
Adlai Stevenson II1900–1965Speech in Columbus, Ohio (3 October 1952); quoted in The International Thesaurus of Quotations (1970) edited by Rhoda Thomas Tripp, p. 429
In matters of national security emotion is no substitute for intelligence, nor rigidity for prudence. To act coolly, intelligently and prudently in perilous circumstances is the test of a man — and also a nation.
Adlai Stevenson II1900–1965Radio address (11 April 1955); as quoted in The World’s Great Speeches (1999) edited by Lewis Copeland, Lawrence W. Lamm, and Stephen J. McKenna
- Character
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)
The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances.
Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
- Change
I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.
Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894Kidnapped (1886), Chapter XIVIn context
- Good & Evil
The silence of a wise man is always meaningful.
Leo Strauss1899–1973Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), p. 30
A traveller’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad, as well as good, example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter XIIIn context
- Writing
You should think of your energy as if it’s expensive, as if it’s like a luxury item. Not everyone can afford it.
Taylor Swiftborn 1989New Heights podcast (13 August 2025)
- Advice
Nothing can be done at once hastily and prudently.
PSPublilius Syrus101–101 BCThe Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave, Maxim 557
It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.
Nassim Nicholas Talebborn 1960The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 78
My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
Nassim Nicholas Talebborn 1960Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 156
- Philosophy
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892Locksley Hall (1842)In contextOften credited to Calvin Coolidge