Wisdom Quotes

Wisdom is not the same as intelligence — it is intelligence filtered through experience, humility, and time. These quotes offer the kind of perspective you usually have to live several decades to acquire, compressed into a sentence or two.

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

Henry David Thoreau

More Wisdom Quotes

“If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

Abraham Maslow

“Clinton is a big personality who has led a big life, and for some of the media conventional wisdom to boil it down to a view that 'all people are really interested in' are a few moments of madness in the Oval Office gets him, the importance of the presidency, and the significance of his life, all wrong.”

Alastair Campbell

“One part of wisdom is knowing what you don't need anymore and letting it go.”

Jane Fonda

“You must accept responsibility for your actions, but not the credit for your achievements.”

Denis Waitley

“The Relation we bear to the Wisdom of the Father, the Son of His Love, gives us indeed a dignity which otherwise we have no pretence to. It makes us something, something considerable even in God's Eyes.”

Mary Astell

“Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.”

William Wordsworth

“I am thinking of taking a fifth wife. Why not? Solomon had a thousand wives and he is a synonym for wisdom.”

John Barrymore

“In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.”

George Eliot

“It is good even for old men to learn wisdom.”

Aeschylus

“From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.”

Publilius Syrus

“Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.”

Robert Duvall

“Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.”

Charles Caleb Colton

“Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.”

Honore de Balzac

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