What is wisdom? It’s one of the deepest, widest, most elusive, most complex, simplest, most intriguing concepts around. When you think you know what wisdom is, you’re not quite there; it cannot be pursued and grasped or taught and learned easily. It has long been the province of philosophers and theologians, but recently psychologists have begun to try to define, describe, and delineate this nebulous and fascinating idea. Here are twenty-five little-known quotes about wisdom that I imagine you would find worth your time. Think of them more like a little puzzle piece that takes time to understand, interpret, grasp, and appreciate than to envision each being a simple rule that can be easily memorized. More diverse and instructive wisdom quotes can be found by searching The Wisdom Archive – a searchable quotation database that is always no-cost, easy, and ad-free!
“It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely, honorably, and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely, honorably and justly without living pleasantly.” ~ Epicurus
“We are neither omniscient nor infallible. We must work to achieve our knowledge. The mere presence of an idea inside our mind does not prove that the idea is true; many ideas that are false may enter our consciousness.”
“We should search out those with opinions, ideas and views different from our own. We should strive to fully understand those opinions, ideas and views, not simply from our own perspective but from theirs as well, not to agree with or even to accept them but to fully understand them. In the absence of these two endeavors and the contrast they provide we can never fully appreciate or be sure of our own opinions, ideas and views, stop our growth and turn to stone. Our appreciation for the diversity of others quickly fades then our ability to see their beauty and love them for who they are not for who we wish them to be will soon be gone as well.” ~ Robert L. Lloyd
“What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.” ~ Adolf Hitler
“The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful – and then only for a short while.”~ Albert Einstein
“The idea of ‘meta-wisdom’ is really an invitation to reframe, to step back and reassess a vexing situation from top to bottom. This process probably involves a reconsideration of our working knowledge and a commitment to acquire new information, however unsettling it might be, which thus implicates courage; it obliges us to mine different shafts of memory; it forces us to reevaluate all this intelligence and fact-finding and feeling in the face of uncertainty; and it encourages us to acknowledge the fact that context, the frame around the problem, is crucial. In short, wisdom (more specifically, meta-wisdom) is an invitation, an imperative, to deliberate.” ~ Stephen S. Hall
“There is nothing wrong with loving your work and wanting to apply yourself to it. But there is so much more to life. Balance is what is important, maintaining balance.” ~ Bronnie Ware
“Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you.” ~ Frank Tyger
“If you follow your heart, if you listen to your gut, and if you extend your hand to help another, not for any agenda, but for the sake of humanity, you are going to find the truth.” ~ Erin Brockovich
“The country’s political impressions are heavily influenced by people who are supposed to be neutral observers — reporters, television anchors, think-tank experts and the like. They’re not perfectly neutral, of course. They have their biases. But most aspire to partisan neutrality. It’s an honorable aspiration. And it’s not easy to achieve.” ~ David Leonhardt
“…most situations deserve to be viewed from many perspectives. Any one perspective on a situation, even if it is a totally valid perspective, reveals just a tiny bit of the truth of that situation. Additional valid perspectives reveal more.” ~Copthorne MacDonald
“…we need to be open-minded, in the metaphoric but also neural sense. Since emotions are instantaneous and automatic (for very good evolutionary reasons), they also tend to be closed; they sometimes foreclose potential routes of information acquisition. Emotion always assumes the amount of knowledge in hand is adequate to govern a decision, even when it may not be.” ~ Stephen S. Hall
“There is this tension inside of us where somehow we take ourselves so terribly seriously – and we have good reasons to – but we also understand that everything that we do treasure and take so terribly seriously can be questioned from some standpoint. That we have no firm ground to stand on from which we can say, ‘This actually is how things really matter, and which things matter.’ [The author is referring to Thomas Nagel’s ideas about the absurdity of life, and how it is different from that of Albert Camus].” ~ Mattias Risse
“So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.” ~ Epicurus
“Life doesn’t owe us anything. We only owe ourselves, to make the most of the life we are living, of the time we have left, and to live in gratitude.” ~ Bronnie Ware
“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.”
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing you will be successful.” ~ Albert Schweitzer
“Research has suggested that in a few short weeks, mindfulness meditation practice can bring about physiological, psychological, and social benefits in our lives. From increases in gray matter in the brain to alleviating physical ailments such as migraines and fibromyalgia, the benefits of mindfulness and meditation practice more generally have been touted for everyone ranging from executives to schoolchildren.” ~ Hooria Jazaieri
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” ~ Susan B. Anthony
“As we have moved more of our lives onto the internet, we have stopped living in actual communities. Instead we have created virtual communities where everyone thinks the same. We do not have to worry about the homeless man under the bridge because he is no longer part of our community. He is someone else’s problem. But that simply is not true.” ~ Erick-Woods Erickson
“The difficulties, hardships, and trials of life, the obstacles are positive blessings: they knit the muscles more firmly and teach self-reliance.” ~ William Matthews
“I see babies cry
While I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more
Than I’ll ever know
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.” ~ Bob Thiele and George David Weiss
“This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education – of learning how to be well-adjusted: you get to decide what has meaning and what doesn’t.” ~ David Foster Wallace
“Thinking about the authentic life is actually a very difficult thing to do. Some people think that the authentic life is just to say ‘No’ to everything that happens around them. That’s not an authentic life. That’s just another way of becoming dependent [on others]. It’s very hard, actually, to spell out what an authentic life would be; it’s a very cumbersome process to actually come to one’s own viewpoint and have any kind of reliable sense that ‘I have this standpoint because I really thought it through, carefully, for myself’ rather than one way or another buying into somebody else’s story – if only by rejecting it.” ~ Mattias Risse
“Real life is not confined to a chess board; it is not symmetrical and neat; it does not always reward boldness and aggression; it does not forbid a new piece from flying in out of left field. Sometimes the rules change abruptly and without warning. Sometimes the situation looks deceptively similar to a previous scenario but isn’t. Sometimes you are absolutely certain about something, but you turn out to be absolutely wrong.” ~ Stephen S. Hall
“The desire to experience some sense of community seems universal. What then does it mean to speak of the virtue of self-reliance? What does it mean to celebrate the value of individualism?” ~ Nathaniel Branden
“Not everything should be political, and we can only make everything political when we decide the other side is evil just because they disagree with us. We can see the world only in this polarized way if we never take the time to know anyone on the other side, if we never find ways to build friendship despite our differences.” ~ Erick-Woods Erickson
These final wisdom quotes are related: think about them as a group. What do you find when you digest them consecutively?
“Life is in many ways a lot easier and a lot fuller if one learns to take advice. Rather than digging in one’s heels and to say, ‘Well, I’m beyond advice-giving.’ The chances are, for most anything you believe, there is good advice to be given that would at least put [your preconceived notion or cherished beliefs] into question.” ~ Mattias Risse
Also…
“Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt, particularly one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas, one’s axioms.” ~ Will Durant
And…
“To some modern psychologists, the humility that comes with limitations is the ultimate distillation and definition of wisdom. In an extended 1990 essay on this theme, John A. Meacham argued that “the essence of wisdom is to hold the attitude that knowledge is fallible and to strive for a balance between knowing and doubting.” Like many others, Meacham draws a sharp distinction between mere factual knowledge and true wisdom.” ~ Stephen S. Hall
but…
“Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.” ~ Doris Lessing
Here is a podcast that features some never-before-heard quotes about wisdom from experts Copthorne Macdonald and Nicholas Maxwell. Philosophical thinker and founder of Values of the Wise, Jason Merchey, interviewed them for 45 minutes and it was an intriguing dialogue about wisdom, education, knowledge, and personal growth.
