Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. See our disclosure for more info.
Are you seeking words of wisdom? Here are the best wisdom quotes and wise sayings to light your way.
Wisdom is one of the most valued human traits and has been since ancient civilization. But what is it exactly?
Some say wisdom second sight or spiritual gift, while others think it’s the result of age and experience. We’ve compiled the best words of wisdom for you so you can decide for yourself.
Top 10 Wisdom Quotes
Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
William Stafford
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Socrates
PinWisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
Albert Einstein
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jeffesron
Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.
Thomas J. Watson
PinThe seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom, in the heart.
William Hazlitt
Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.
Horace
Quotes about Wisdom
Wisdom is a sacred communion.
Victore Hugo
Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means.
Francis Hutcheson
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
PinWisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.
Norman Cousins
It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
David Starr Jordan
Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.
Juvenal
Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable.
John Patrick
Learn the wisdom of compromise, for it is better to bend a little then to break.
Jane Wells
Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
Theodore Isaac Rubin
Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it.
Doug Larson
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
Proverbs 10:9, ESV
Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.
Hermann Hesse
PinWhere there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.
St. Francis of Assisi
Faith keeps our ships moving, while empathy and the memories of our experiences lead to wisdom.
Suzy Kassem
There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.
Charles Dickens
Turn your wounds into wisdom.
Oprah Winfrey
On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows. In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
Edward Young
The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Follow your instincts. That’s where true wisdom manifests itself.
Oprah Winfrey
Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.
Doug Larson
Patience is the companion of wisdom.
Saint Augustine
Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.
Sophocles
PinBy three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius
Cleverness is not wisdom.
Euripides
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.
Tom Wilson
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann
Seeking Wisdom
In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it – thou art a fool.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
Benjamin Franklin
Related: 8 Life Lessons from Benjamin Franklin
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.
John Cheever
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
William Blake
Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness.
Sacha Guitry
PinTo acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.
Marilyn vos Savant
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
George Santayana
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Khalil Gibran
Wisdom begins in wonder.
Socrates
Wisdom comes alone through suffering.
Aeschylus
Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.
Baltasar Gracian
Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.
William Wordsworth
A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
Francis Bacon
Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
Felix Frankfurter
We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
Marcel Proust
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
Immanuel Kant
Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom.
Mary Browne
PinThe saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
Ludwig van Beethoven
All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.
Alexandre Dumas
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Words of Wisdom Quotes
Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as scientists.
James Newman
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.
Gerald Brenan
We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions.
Don Miguel Ruiz
The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
The best wisdom comes from the hardest struggle.
Xavier Rudd
Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.
Earl Nightingale
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas Paine
PinWhere fear is present, wisdom cannot be.
Lactantius
Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
Walter Benjamin
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
Anatole France
It all begins and ends in your mind. What you give power to, has power over you, if you allow it.
Leon Brown
The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.
Thomas S. Monson
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.
Honore de Balzac
Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.
Archimedes
What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.
Ellen Glasgow
Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.
Bob Marley
Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.
Elbert Hubbard
Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
Francis Bacon
PinThe best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.
Joseph Smith, Jr.
Wisdom sails with wind and time.
John Florio
It is wisdom in prosperity, when all is as thou wouldn’t have it, to fear and suspect the worst.
Desiderius Erasmus
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Henry David Thoreau
All human wisdom works and has worries and grief as reward.
Johann Georg Hamann
Knowledge vs. Wisdom
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
Martin H. Fischer
Discipline is wisdom and vice versa.
M. Scott Peck
Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
Jimi Hendrix
Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more.
William Cowper
It is costly wisdom that is bought by experience.
Roger Ascham
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.
Khalil Gibran
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.
Sandra Carey
PinWisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
Charles Spurgeon
Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more.
William Cowper
Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better.
Kay Redfield Jamison
Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.
Lao Tzu
He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty.
Mary Wilson Little
The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.
John F. Kennedy
Sometimes it’s not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don’t mean.
Bob Dylan
Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.
Thomas J. Watson
Wise Quotes
Some wisdom you must learn from one who’s wise.
Euripides
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Rumi
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
George Bernard Shaw
The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.
William Inge
The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.
C.S. Lewis
PinNever interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.
Aesop
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
Carl Jung
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Samuel Johnson
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Charles Dickens
The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.
Paulo Coelho
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
It is impossible to love and to be wise.
Francis Bacon
Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.
Epictetus
Wise Sayings
Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.
Arthur Helps
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
George Santayana
Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in few.
Pythagoras
PinI’m always doing things I can’t do. That’s how I get to do them.
Pablo Picasso
O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!
Sir Walter Scott
Everything is within your power, and your power is within you.
Janice Trachtman
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.
Isaac D’Israeli
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir
He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.
Marcus Aurelius
When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
Richard Whately
No one wants advice – only corroboration.
John Steinbeck
Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Robert Frost
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
Andre Gide
The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.
Epicurus
The superior man blames himself. The inferior man blames others.
Don Shula
PinWe are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
Winston Churchill
We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.
James M. Barrie
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.
William Inge
Wise Proverbs
The less you talk, the more you’re listened to.
Pauline Phillips
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.
Buddha
To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
Pierre Corneille
It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
Leonardo da Vinci
Who is wise in love, love most, say least.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
A closed mouth catches no flies.
Miguel de Cervantes
It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.
Thomas Hobbes
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Aristotle
PinIt’s not the load that weighs you down, it’s how you carry it.
C.S. Lewis
Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.
Robert Kennedy
Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.
Euripides
To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it.
Wilson Mizner
Wise Man Quotes
He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
Epictetus
Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion.
Grantland Rice
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
David Hume
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Wise men make more opportunities than they find.
Francis Bacon
Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
Harper Lee
Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.
Alphonse de Lamartine
A smart man only believes half of what he hears, a wise man knows which half.
Jeff Cooper
A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.
John C. Maxwell
PinIt is best for the wise man not to seem wise.
Aeschylus
A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation.
Moliere
Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.
Diogenes
A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
Herb Caen
Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.
Confucius
We are wiser than we know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
Henry David Thoreau
Travel makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
Thomas Fuller
In youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare!
Homer
They whom truth and wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed.
William Cowper
Wise Men Vs. Fools
A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare
Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
Otto Von Bismarck
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
Niccolo Machiavelli
PinThere is only a finger’s difference between a wise man and a fool.
Diogenes
Man’s wisdom is his best friend; folly his worst enemy.
William Temple
A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs 1:7, ESV
By the mouth of a fool comes a rod for his back, but the lips of the wise will preserve them.
Proverbs 14:3, ESV
The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.
Proverbs 12:15, KJV
A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
Bruce Lee
The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.
Confucius
A wise man may look ridiculous in the company of fools.
Thomas Fuller
Many have been the wise speeches of fools, though not so many as the foolish speeches of wise men.
Thomas Fuller
He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.
James Huneker
There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.
Francis Bacon
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
Plato
Do you feel wiser after reading these wise words from philosophers, thinkers, and inventors? Hopefully these wisdom quotes help you understand what wisdom is, what its benefits are, and how to gain it.
The first step is to seek it, but not all will find it. Some people confuse wisdom with knowledge, but not all smart people are wise.
On the other hand, maybe you’ll think of a few wise people who aren’t that smart. Shakespeare often uses “fools” in his plays as foils who possess immense wisdom that contrasts their lack of intelligence in other areas.
What counts is what wisdom means to you and what you do with it. So put these wise words to use and see how you do!