Wisest Quotes & Sayings

It is no weakness for the wisest man to learn when he is wrong. — Sophocles

The wisest man I ever knew taught me something I never forgot. And although I never forgot it, I never quite memorized it either. So what I'm left with is the memory of having learned something very wise that I can't quite remember. — George Carlin

In marriage we have a duty to God, our spuses, the world, and future generations. But we are sinners. A husband and wife need to acknowledge that when the Bible speaks of fools, it is not just speaking about other people, but about them as well. Even the wisest among us has moments of folly. So God gives us spouses to serve as wise friends by praying with and for us, attending church with us, speaking truth, and providing Scripture along with good books and online classes, lectures, and sermons to nourish fruitfulness in our lives. — Mark Driscoll

Nothing can be more notorious than the calumnies and invectives with which the wisest measures and most virtuous characters of The United States have been pursued and traduced [By American Newspapers] — Thurgood Marshall

What you did tonight was clever," Wit said. "You turned an attack into a promise. The wisest of men know that to render an insult powerless, you often need only to embrace it. — Brandon Sanderson

And this,' said she, 'is the end of all his friend's anxious circumspection! of all his sister's falsehood and contrivance! The happiest, wisest, most reasonable end! — Jane Austen

The wisest man is he who can account for his actions. — Umar

In all human affairs, the wisest course is to be passionate about the role of reason and reasonable about the role of passion. — Mardy Grothe

[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]
This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects (Works, Vol. iv, p. 327). — Thomas Jefferson

You must not talk about 'ain't and can't' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean. — Charles Kingsley

Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom realize what they've missed in the way of conversation. Some of the best talk and the wisest talk I've ever heard was around campfires, in saloons, bunkhouses, and the like. The idea that all the knowledge of the world is bound up in schools and schoolteachers is a mistaken one. — Louis L'Amour

The hen is the wisest of all the animal creation, because she never cackles until the egg is laid. — Abraham Lincoln

Harness the imagination: Sometimes curbing her, sometimes giving her rein, for she is the whole of happiness. She sets to rights even the understanding. She sinks to tyranny, not satisfied with mere faith, but demanding works. Thus she becomes the mistress of life itself. She does so with pleasure or with pain, according to the nonsense presented. She makes people contented or discontented with themselves. By dangling before some nothing but the specter of their eternal suffering, she becomes the scourge of these fools. To others she shows nothing but fortune and romance, while merrily laughing. Of all this she is capable if not held in check by the wisest of wills. — Baltasar Gracian

A dry soul is wisest and best. — Heraclitus

The wisest man may be a blind father. — Jules Verne

Prodigies! Geniuses! Artists! The lumer-lumpen are some of the most sensitive, the most brilliant, the wisest creatures on the earth or inside of it. There is more wisdom in the head of a lumpen than you will find in all the libraries of the world ... If only they could speak ... — Lauren Oliver

Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us. — James Russell Lowell

The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless. — Plato

It is never for their wisdom that one loves the wisest. — Hester Lynch Piozzi

Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools. — R. Scott Bakker

I would have thought that your being sent by the wisest men in your country, supposedly, to fight a nearly endless, thankless, horrifying, and, finally, pointless war, would have given you sufficient insight into the nature of humanity to last you throughout all eternity! — Kurt Vonnegut

Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all. — Michel De Montaigne

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best? — Thomas Babington Macaulay

If we could sufficiently understand the order of the universe, we should find that it exceeds all the desires of the wisest men, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is, not only as a whole and in general but also for ourselves in particular, if we are attached, as we ought to be, to the Author of all, not only as to the architect and efficient cause of our being, but as to our master and to the final cause, which ought to be the whole aim of our will, and which can alone make our happiness. — Gottfried Leibniz

What is probable, gentlemen, is that in fact the god is wise and that his oracular response meant that human wisdom is worth little or nothing, and that when he says this man, Socrates, he is using my name as an example, as if he said: This man among you, mortals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless. — Plato

Organize your life the way God wants it to be. When you pray, ask God for counsel on matters and you will get the wisest advice directly from heaven — Sunday Adelaja

Open your eyes, Mac." "What do you mean?" "Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them. He thinks you have the heart of a warrior. He believes in you. Believe in him. — Karen Marie Moning

To one degree or another we all fight against preconceptions nearly every day. The wisest people I know don't compare their fight to that of others. Everything is relative through the lens of personal struggle.
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes ... mine are often those who are fighting their fight in public. Unashamed. Proud. An example.
Heroes aren't perfect. They have faults and flaws. They stumble from time to time. They are heroes, though, because they correct themselves ... and set an example, intended or not, for the world observing them ... even, and especially, to those who would love nothing more than to see them fail.
Stay Strong! — Dennis Sharpe

Sam looked at his master with approval, but also with surprise: there was a look in his face and a tone in his voice that he had not known before. It had always been a notion of his that the kindness of dear Mr. Frodo was of such a high degree that it must imply a fair measure of blindness. Of course, he also firmly held the incompatible belief that Mr. Frodo was the wisest person in the world (with the possible exception of Old Mr. Bilbo and of Gandalf). — J.R.R. Tolkien

A wise leader, a past King of Wayland actually, wrote this in his personal history at the end of his very successful reign. I found his advice in the Archives and think it some of the wisest advice ever written: 'Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. — Jeff Wheeler

What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart. — Lew Wallace

The wisest prophets make sure of the event first. — Horace Walpole

If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present ... gratefully. — Maya Angelou

I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to — J.R.R. Tolkien

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness. — Thomas Jefferson

Do not grieve. Misfortune will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and cannot be prevented should not be grieved for ... Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives - they grow everywhere. — Kent Nerburn

Thinking well to be wise: planning well, wiser: doing well wisest and best of all. — Malcolm Forbes

Tied up a lot of women, have you?" He raised one eyebrow, whatever that meant. "A bit odd, are you?" She was being sarcastic, trying to taunt him into a sense of guilt. While perhaps bursting any bubble in herself of misguided, soft-hearted concern for a man with sad eyes and complicated wealth. Though his sexual inclinations were perhaps not the wisest of barbs to do either. He looked down at her, speculative.
"Difficult to say." He actually answered the question seriously. "Legally? Decidedly. But then British laws on the subject are so guilt-ridden I'm surprised we've propagated as a race." He mad a small, grim smile. "How delightful we're having this conversation. And what is it you like? — Judith Ivory

You know, bud, I don't know you from Adam, but that's my baby sister you're hanging on to. So I'm thinking the wisest course of action for you is to let her go and introduce yourself. Pronto. (Rain) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The wisdom of God exceeds that of the wisest man, more than his wisdom exceeds that of a child. If a child were to conjecture how an army is to be formed in the day of battle
how a city is to be fortified, or a state governed
what chance has he to guess right? As little chance has the wisest man when he pretends to conjecture how the planets move in their courses, how the sea ebbs and flows, and how our minds act upon our bodies. — Thomas Reid

Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to chose the wisest thing and once you've chosen the wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it. — Maya Angelou

The wisest persons, surprised by some passion, often say things they later regret. — Vincent De Paul

Not to mention that I have finally
arrived at that age where a woman starts to question whether the wisest way to get over the
loss of one beautiful brown-eyed young man is indeed to promptly invite another one into her
bed. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear.
"Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock.
Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day. — Norton Juster

I've met the Dalai Lama briefly, but I would probably say my grandfather was the wisest person I ever met. He was my mother's father, an Indian, a family doctor, and very unlike me in that he was deeply religious. — Salman Rushdie

When you meditate you have to try to quiet and calm the mind. There should be no thought within the mind. Right now you feel that if you can cherish twenty ideas at a time, then you are the wisest man on earth. The more thoughts that enter into our minds, the more clever we feel we are. But in the spiritual life it is not like that. If consciously we can make the mind calm and quiet, we feel that a new creation dawns inside us. — Sri Chinmoy

Survival of the fittest is over. Get over it. We need survival of the wisest. — Deepak Chopra

It may be considered as an objection inherent in the principle, that as every appeal to the people would carry an implication of some defect in the government, frequent appeals would in great measure deprive the government of that veneration which time bestows on every thing, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability ... a constitutional road to the decision of the people ought to be marked out and kept open, for certain great and extraordinary occasions — James Madison

Time is the wisest counsellor of all — Pericles

Sometimes 'Hmm' is the wisest thing to say. — Alethea Kontis

There are plenty of fools in the world; but if they had not been sent for some wise purpose, they wouldn't have been here; and since they are here they have as good a right to have elbow-room in the world as the wisest. — Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

I think Willim Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank though, that's not saying much. We are impossibly conceited animals, and actually dumb as heck. Ask any teacher. You don't even have to ask a teacher. Ask anybody. Dogs and cats are smarter than we are. — Kurt Vonnegut

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. — Charles William Eliot

The first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The free market is not only a more efficient decision maker than even the wisest central planning body, but even more important, the free market keeps economic power widely dispersed. — Milton Friedman

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's. — G.K. Chesterton

Conscience is our wisest counselor and teacher, our most faithful and most patient friend. — Billy Graham

In one thing you have not changed, dear friend," said Aragorn: "you still speak in riddles."
"What? In riddles?" said Gandalf. "No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A regard for the public tranquillity, which would so frequently have been interrupted by annual or by occasional elections, induced the primitive Christians to constitute an honourable and perpetual magistracy, and to choose one of the wisest and most holy among their presbyters to execute, during his life, the duties of their ecclesiastical governor. It was under these circumstances that the lofty title of Bishop began to raise itself above the humble appellation of presbyter; and while the latter remained the most natural distinction for the members of every Christian senate, the former was appropriated to the dignity of its new president. — Edward Gibbon

Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being our Self is the wisest philosophy, the bravest action, the kindest consideration and the greatest act of healing imaginable. — Robert Holden

Work for a Better Life as if you live forever,
And work for Better End as if you die tomorrow — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

To paraphrase something the anthropologist Ashley Montagu once said, the way I change my life is to act as if I'm the person I want to be. This is, to me, the simplest, wisest advice you can give anyone. When you wake up and act like a loving person, you realize not only that you are altered, but that the people around you are also transformed, because everybody is changed by the reception of this love ... — Bernie Siegel

The basis of the First Amendment is the hypothesis that speech can rebut speech, propaganda will answer propaganda, free debate of ideas will result in the wisest governmental policies. — Fred M. Vinson

The public is wiser than the wisest critic. — George Bancroft

Greatest surprises I have encountered has been that the people who seem wisest about the necessity of placing limits on the newest technologies are, often, precisely the ones who helped develop those technologies, which have bulldozed over so many of the limits of old. The very people, in short, who have worked to speed up the world are the same ones most sensitive to the virtue of slowing down. — Pico Iyer

Any fool can start a war, and once he's done so, even the wisest of men are helpless to stop it - especially if it's a nuclear war. — Nikita Khrushchev

The first priority will consist in restoring a sense of the acceptance of life as a gift from God. According to both Sacred Scripture and the wisest traditions of your continent, the arrival of a child is always a gift, a blessing from God. Today it is high time to place greater emphasis on this: every human being, every tiny human person, however weak, is created 'in the image and likeness of God' (Gen 1:27) — Pope Benedict XVI

The loudest voice in a room is seldom the wisest. — Matshona Dhliwayo

The wisest thing you'll ever do in this life is to draw close to God and to seek Him with all your heart. — Bob Sorge

Wait for that wisest of all counselores, Time. — Pericles

We have all our playthings. Happy are they who are contented with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill consequences. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Communication is the one class no one graduates from. Even the wisest man's words will be misinterpreted by a fool. — Shannon L. Alder

The facile delusions which conceal from us our true situation all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios and lion-tamers. — Leo Strauss

According to Mark 11:12-13, God's messengers were not the only ones who were incompetent: 'He [Jesus] was hungry. And on seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.'
Imagine Jesus, the divine, holy, wisest of the wise not knowing that figs were out of season. Now allegedly Jesus could have performed a miracle and made figs magically appear, but he preferred sour grapes instead: Then he said to the tree, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' (Mark 11:14) — G.M. Jackson

Doing nothing at all is often the very wisest thing ... as the world is a ball and is turning and everything is in fact in motion all the time, doing nothing is not really doing nothing, it's allowing things to mover at their own pace — Niall Williams

I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something. — Maya Angelou

When an invincible weapon deals with an impenetrable defense,
war is useless. The wisest decision is to ceasefire and do synergy. — Toba Beta

Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts,
the first and the wisest of beasts, it may be, but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree and not in kind,
just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

But space shrinks when you get old, and things lose their wonder, and the wisest thing to do then is to try your best to sleep. — Dexter Palmer

From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. JOHN 1:16 JUNE 14 Health and prosperity can be yours. I realize that you may regard this as a very extravagant assertion - a big order, so to speak; but please remember that I do not make this assertion on my own authority. I have this on the authority of the wisest Book ever written. The Bible isn't as fearful of promising big things as some of the more timid, halfhearted preachers of the gospel. The Bible makes superlative promises, because its promises are inspired by a loving and omnipotent God. But the Bible is also very subtle. And it points out that the blessings of health and prosperity are not easily given or easily received. Parenthetically, I want to say that by prosperity, the Bible does not mean merely material affluence; it means to enter abundantly into the blessings of God's grace. And it tells us that health and prosperity come to us when our soul is in harmony with — Norman Vincent Peale

It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on Divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian. — Joseph Hall

Percy (One) Our new dog, named for the beloved poet, ate a book which unfortunately we had left unguarded. Fortunately it was the Bhagavad Gita, of which many copies are available. Every day now, as Percy grows into the beauty of his life, we touch his wild, curly head and say, Oh, wisest of little dogs. — Mary Oliver

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. — Plato

This was an easy matter with a man Oft in the wrong, and never on his guard; And even the wisest, do the best they can, Have moments, hours, and days, so unprepared, That you might 'brain them with their lady's fan;' And sometimes ladies hit exceeding hard, And fans turn into falchions in fair hands, And why and wherefore no one understands. — George Gordon Byron

The wiser a man becomes, the more he will read, and those who are wisest read most. — Hans Christian Andersen

The wisest investments are made in good health intervention activities. — Ellen J. Barrier

Medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid, the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognized in a few years time. — Marcel Proust

I have had and still do have every confidence in Paul Nitze, a man whom I have known for decades, one of the wisest servants of the American nation but always willing and capable of taking into account the interests of their allies, whoever: the British, or the French or the Germans or others. — Helmut Schmidt

Duty is the best and wisest of all teachers. — Alan Bradley

Fleury had succeeded (but only with difficulty) in overcoming certain qualms as to whether selling one's life as dearly as possible, or even putting it up for sale at all, was, in fact, the wisest course — J.G. Farrell

Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it. — Leo Tolstoy

Wait for the wisest of all counselors, Time. — Pericles

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. it is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. — G.K. Chesterton

How little do the wisest among us know of that which is so important to us all. — Hans Christian Andersen

Such, Echecrates, was the end of our comrade, who was, we may fairly say, of all those whom we knew in our time, the bravest and also the wisest and most upright man. — Plato

The patience and the humility of the face she loved so well was a better lesson to Jo than the wisest lecture, the sharpest reproof. — Louisa May Alcott

The wisest man is generally he who thinks himself the least so. — Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux