Wisdom Quotes & Thoughts

Wisdom in Silence

1. "Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech." – Plutarch
2. "He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words." – Elbert Hubbard
3. "Silence is a source of great strength." – Lao Tzu
4. "The wise man knows when to keep silent." – Euripides
5. "Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom." – Francis Bacon
6. "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." – Martin Luther King Jr.
7. "Words are the clothes thoughts wear." – Samuel Butler
8. "Speech is silver, silence is golden." – Thomas Carlyle
9. "Listen to silence. It has so much to say." – Rumi
10. "Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk." – Doug Larson

Lessons from Experience

1. "Experience is the teacher of all things." – Julius Caesar
2. "Turn your wounds into wisdom." – Oprah Winfrey
3. "With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone." – Oscar Wilde
4. "Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
5. "Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes." – Oscar Wilde
6. "From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own." – Publilius Syrus
7. "Mistakes are the portals of discovery." – James Joyce
8. "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." – Immanuel Kant
9. "Wisdom comes only through suffering." – Aeschylus
10. "The only source of knowledge is experience." – Albert Einstein

Understanding and Empathy

1. "To be wise is to understand how little we know." – Socrates
2. "It is a wise man who knows where courage ends and stupidity begins." – Jerome Cady
3. "Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use." – Thomas J. Watson
4. "Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery." – J.K. Rowling
5. "The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances." – Atisa
6. "The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
7. "Compassion is the greatest wisdom." – Dalai Lama
8. "To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has achieved, but at what he aspires to." – Kahlil Gibran
9. "Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself." – Mohsin Hamid
10. "Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them." – Adlai Stevenson

Wisdom in Simplicity

1. "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." – Leonardo da Vinci
2. "The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials." – Lin Yutang
3. "Simplicity is the glory of expression." – Walt Whitman
4. "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." – Confucius
5. "Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy." – Isaac Newton
6. "There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth." – Leo Tolstoy
7. "Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things." – Isaac Newton
8. "Keep it simple, stupid." – Kelly Johnson
9. "Simplicity is the essence of happiness." – Cedric Bledsoe
10. "The simplest things are often the truest." – Richard Bach

Wisdom through Patience

1. "Patience is the companion of wisdom." – Saint Augustine
2. "The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it." – Arnold H. Glasow
3. "Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
4. "Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious." – Phillips Brooks
5. "One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life." – Chinese Proverb
6. "A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else." – George Savile
7. "Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains." – William Penn
8. "All things are difficult before they become easy." – Thomas Fuller
9. "With love and patience, nothing is impossible." – Daisaku Ikeda
10. "Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness." – Charles Caleb Colton

Wisdom in Action

1. "Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2. "Action is the foundational key to all success." – Pablo Picasso
3. "Observe, don't imitate." – John M. Ford
4. "In action, a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head." – Arthur Schopenhauer
5. "You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water." – Rabindranath Tagore
6. "Do not be wise in words; be wise in deeds." – Jewish Proverb
7. "Well done is better than well said." – Benjamin Franklin
8. "The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action." – Confucius
9. "He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end." – Harry Emerson Fosdick
10. "It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." – Epictetus

Wisdom and Growth

1. "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." – Socrates
2. "Change is the end result of all true learning." – Leo Buscaglia
3. "Growth itself contains the germ of happiness." – Pearl S. Buck
4. "What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." – Zig Ziglar
5. "The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership." – Harvey S. Firestone
6. "Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle." – Napoleon Hill
7. "We can't become what we need to be by remaining what we are." – Oprah Winfrey
8. "The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new." – Socrates
9. "Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely." – Karen Kaiser Clark
10. "The art of life is a constant readjustment to our surroundings." – Kakuzo Okakura

Embracing Uncertainty

1. "Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security." – John Allen Paulos
2. "In wisdom gathered over time, I have found that every experience is a form of exploration." – Ansel Adams
3. "We have to be willing to let go of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." – Joseph Campbell
4. "The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers." – Erich Fromm
5. "Faith means living with uncertainty – feeling your way through life, letting your heart guide you like a lantern in the dark." – Dan Millman
6. "Embrace uncertainty. Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won’t have a title until much later." – Bob Goff
7. "The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably deal with." – Tony Robbins
8. "To embark on the journey towards your goals and dreams requires bravery. To remain on that path requires courage. The bridge that merges the two is commitment." – Steve Maraboli
9. "When nothing is sure, everything is possible." – Margaret Drabble
10. "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure." – Helen Keller

Wisdom and Courage

1. "It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves." – Sir Edmund Hillary
2. "Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently." – Maya Angelou
3. "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts." – Winston Churchill
4. "Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day, saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'" – Mary Anne Radmacher
5. "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face." – Eleanor Roosevelt
6. "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." – Mark Twain
7. "Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim." – Nora Ephron
8. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." – Anaïs Nin
9. "Courage is found in unlikely places." – J.R.R. Tolkien
10. "Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men." – Confucius

Wisdom in Relationships

1. "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." – Carl Jung
2. "The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost." – G.K. Chesterton
3. "Assumptions are the termites of relationships." – Henry Winkler
4. "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." – Peter Drucker
5. "Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved." – Wm. Paul Young
6. "A relationship is not based on the length of time you spent together, it's based on the foundation you built together." – Unknown
7. "To know when to go away and when to come closer is the key to any lasting relationship." – Domenico Cieri Estrada
8. "We are most alive when we're in love." – John Updike
9. "The best thing to hold onto in life is each other." – Audrey Hepburn
10. "A healthy relationship will never require you to sacrifice your friends, your dreams, or your dignity." – Dinkar Kalotra