Wisdom Quotes

The best minds across centuries have wrestled with what it means to be wise. These quotes capture their hard-won insights.

64329 quotes

B
"Beauty fades, but wisdom only grows with age."
Baltasar Gracián
B
"A clever person knows what to say; a wise person knows what not to say."
Baltasar Gracián
B
"Wisdom is knowing the difference between what matters and what doesn't."
Baltasar Gracián
B
"Intelligence without character is a dangerous weapon."
Baltasar Gracián
"A man who understands the nature of numbers holds the keys to understanding the universe."
Gerolamo Cardano
"To doubt is not to disbelieve; it is to seek understanding more earnestly."
Gerolamo Cardano
"To claim certainty in all things is to announce one's profound ignorance."
Gerolamo Cardano
"The man who has never been humbled has never truly learned anything."
Gerolamo Cardano
"The heart knows truths that logic cannot access, and logic reveals truths that emotion cannot feel."
Gerolamo Cardano
"The scholar who never doubts his own scholarship has abandoned the very method that made him a scholar."
Gerolamo Cardano
F
"The mind of man is more excellent than the nature of the body."
Francis Bacon
F
"A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open."
Francis Bacon
F
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."
Francis Bacon
F
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
Francis Bacon
F
"He that is too much in anything, so that he giveth another occasion of satiety, maketh himself cheap."
Francis Bacon
F
"The office of the intellectual is to provide mankind with the ideas by which it will live."
Francis Bacon
F
"The remedy is worse than the disease."
Francis Bacon
F
"These fragments I have spilled into your mind."
Francis Bacon
N
"I am not so enamored with my own opinions that I disregard what others have thought."
Niccolò Copernicus
N
"Knowledge is power, but wisdom is knowing how to use it."
Niccolò Copernicus
N
"Wisdom comes from reflection on experience and study."
Niccolò Copernicus
J
"Books are a treasure that no thief can steal, no fire can burn completely."
Johannes Gutenberg
J
"I did not invent printing to make money, but to make the world richer in spirit."
Johannes Gutenberg
J
"The printed book is humanity's greatest conversation with itself."
Johannes Gutenberg
J
"The press is a tool that only humanity can truly master."
Johannes Gutenberg
J
"I believe that knowledge is the true currency of the world."
Johannes Gutenberg
J
"I have learned that true innovation requires both vision and patience."
Johannes Gutenberg
J
"I have devoted myself not to wealth, but to the wealth of human understanding."
Johannes Gutenberg
R
"The true remedy lies in ourselves."
Raphael Sanzio
R
"Wisdom grows with experience."
Raphael Sanzio