Quotes about wisdom
page 6
Source: Kiss of a Demon King
Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 4 "Called To The Bar"
“Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better.”
“Wisdom and knowledge is everywhere, but so is stupity.”
Source: Voice of the Gods
“A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.”
Source: Stranger in a Strange Land
“Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.”
2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)
Source: Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
“Cleverness is not wisdom. And not to think mortal thoughts is to see few days.”
Bacchæ l. 395
Source: The Bacchae
Source: The Lady of the Rivers
Source: Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
“To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.”
“In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.”
“Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom.”
"One God One Religion - Brother Hamza Andreas Tzortzis" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q-vmmLFat8, Youtube (April 16, 2018)
Source: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
“A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn't really care, wisdom does.”
The Now of Pooh.
Source: The Tao of Pooh (1982)
Context: Abstract cleverness of the mind only separates the thinker from the world of reality, and that world, the Forest of Real Life, is in a desperate condition now because of too many who think too much and care too little. In spite of what many minds have thought themselves into believing, that mistake cannot continue for much longer if everything is going to survive. The one chance we have to avoid certain disaster is to change our approach, and learn to value wisdom and contentment. These are things that are being searched for anyway, through Knowledge and Cleverness, but they do not come from Knowledge and Cleverness. They never have, and they never will. We can no longer afford to look so desperately hard for something in the wrong way and in the wrong place. If Knowledge and Cleverness are allowed to go on wrecking things, they will before much longer destroy all life on this earth as we know it, and what little may temporarily survive will not be worth looking at, even if it were possible for us to do so.
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Lufkin, Texas http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/lufkin-texas-jul1997-full.html (July 19, 1997)
In Concert
“It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.”
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Variant: A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.
“Now that I know that I am no wiser than anyone else, does this wisdom make me wiser?”
Source: Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person
“To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.”
Part 1, Chapter 1
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
“To a fool time brings only age not wisdom.”
“A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.”
“To keep your secret is wisdom, but to expect others to keep it is folly.”
“Never question another man's motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives.”
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 3
Source: Heart of Darkness
“There is beauty in compassion, but one must learn wisdom too.”
Source: The Final Empire
Source: The Importance of Living
“The scarcity of years does not necessitate lack of wisdom.”
Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: Softmindedness often invades religion. … Softminded persons have revised the Beautitudes to read "Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God." This has led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. … Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.”
“They must often change who would remain constant in happiness and wisdom.”
“age has its own glory, beauty, and wisdom that belong to it.”
Source: The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
“Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.”
Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 ( closing remarks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgYYxfpPC0)
2010s, 2010
Context: When Socrates was sentenced to death, for his philosophical investigations and his blasphemy for challenging the Gods of the city and he accepted his death. He did say "well, if we're lucky perhaps I'll be able to hold a conversation with other great thinkers and philosophers and doubters too", in other words that the discussion about what is good, what is beautiful, what is noble and what is pure and what is true can always go on. Why is that important, why would I like to do that? Because that is the only conversation worth having. And whether it goes on or not after I die, I don't know, but I do know that it is the conversation I want to have while I am still alive. Which means that for me, the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can't give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don't know anything like enough yet. That I haven't understood enough, that I can't know enough, that I'm always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn't have it any other way. And I urge you to look at those of you that tell you (at your age) that that you are dead until you believe as they do. (What a terrible thing to be telling to children.) And that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority. Don't think of that as a gift, think of it as a poison chalice. Push it aside no matter how tempting it is. Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.
Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information
Journal for Saturday, 27th November 1813; Quoted in Letters and Journals of Lord Byron by Thomas Moore (1830), Vol III, Chap. XVII, p. 208 http://books.google.com/books?id=nloLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA208
“Emotions were like wild horses and it required wisdom to be able to control them”
“Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.”
"Conflict in Vietnam and at Home" speech http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rfk/filmmore/ps_ksu.html at Kansas State University on March 18, 1968 as part of the Alfred M. Landon Lectures on Public Issues.
Source: The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
Un désespoir paisible, sans convulsions de colère et sans reproches au ciel est la sagesse même.
Page 32 http://books.google.com/books?id=BVdHAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Un+d%C3%A9sespoir+paisible,+sans+convulsions+de+col%C3%A8re+et+sans+reproches+au+ciel+est+la+sagesse+m%C3%AAme%22&pg=PA32#v=onepage.
Journal d'un poète (1867)
20,000 Quips & Quotes, Introduction, pviii
Source: The Tunnel (1995), p. 271
2000s, Before In History (2004)
:s:The World as Will and Representation/Preface to the First Edition
Kants Philosophie also ist die einzige, mit welcher eine gründliche Bekanntschaft bei dem hier Vorzutragenden gradezu vorausgesetzt wird. — Wenn aber überdies noch der Leser in der Schule des göttlichen Platon geweilt hat; so wird er um so besser vorbereitet und empfänglicher seyn mich zu hören. Ist er aber gar noch der Wohllhat der Veda's theilhaft geworden, deren uns durch die Upanischaden eröfneter Zugang, in meinen Augen, der größte Vorzug ist, den dieses noch junge Jahrhundert vor den früheren aufzuweisen hat, indem ich vermuthe, daß der Einfluß der Samskrit-Litteratur nicht weniger tief eingreifen wird, als im 14ten Jahrhundert die Wiederbelebung der Griechischen: hat also, sage ich, der Leser auch schon die Weihe uralter Indischer Weisheit empfangen und empfänglich aufgenommen; dann ist er auf das allerbeste bereitet zu hören, was ich ihm vorzutragen habe. Ihn wird es dann nicht, wie manchen Andern fremd, ja feindlich ansprechen; da ich, wenn es nicht zu stolz klänge, behaupten möchte, daß jeder von den einzelnen und abgerissenen Aussprüchen, welche die Upanischaden ausmachen, sich als Folgesatz aus dem von mir mitzutheilenden Gedanken ableiten ließe, obgleich keineswegs auch umgekehrt dieser schon dort zu finden ist.
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Leipzig 1819. Vorrede. pp.XII-XIII books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=0HsPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR12
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)
Sirius (1944)
Source: The Space Merchants (1953), Chapter 2 (p. 15)
Excerpt from speech delivered at the 74th commencement of the Albany Law School on June 10, 1925, which is reproduced on a gigantic plaque on the west side (facing the setting sun, as if to say, "Go West, young man.") of the UC Berkeley School of Law's main building, Boalt Hall.
Other writings
Groupon CEO: “I Was Fired Today.” http://allthingsd.com/20130228/groupon-dumps-andrew-mason-as-ceo (February 28, 2013)
““The acceptance of indeterminacy is the beginning of wisdom,” the hermit quoted.”
Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 14 (p. 70)
Prometheus
Poems (1851), Prometheus
ThurgoodMarshall.com, Speeches. Constitutional Speech http://www.thurgoodmarshall.com/speeches/constitutional_speech.htm (May 6, 1987)
George Horne (bp. of Norwich.) (1799). Discourses on several subjects and occasions. Vol. 1,2, p. 357; As quoted in Allibone (1880)
Dissent, Gilbert v. Minnesota, 254 U.S. 325, 338 (1920).
Judicial opinions
Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 22
“Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.”
Dissenting, Henslee v. Union Planters National Bank & Trust Co., 335 U.S. 600 (1949).
Judicial opinions
On the secession movement in the South (1860). Reported in Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln (1950), p. 387.
1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old
As quoted in The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in The Military (1998), by Gerald Astor, De Capo Press, pp. 440–443