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Wise Quotes

When you are looking to be wise, it is a must to be as less foolish as you possibly can be. When you are looking to be wise, a few wise quotes can help you get as wise as you possibly can be. However, you shouldn’t really stop at reading these quotes. What you should be looking at doing is coating the wisdom found in these quotes onto your life. Go right ahead and read on for famous quotations and sayings on cleverness.

Mel Gibson

It's a wise man who understands that every day is a new beginning, because boy, how many mistakes do you make in a day? I don't know about you, but I make plenty. You can't turn the clock back, so you have to look ahead.

Horace

Begin, be bold and venture to be wise.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.

Baltasar Gracian

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

George Washington

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.

John Wayne

When I was a sophomore at USC, I was a socialist, pretty much to the left. But not when I left the university. I quickly got wise. I'd read about what had happened to Russia in 1917 when the Communists took over.

Hippocrates

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

Bruce Lee

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

Victor Hugo

The wise man does not grow old, but ripens.

William James

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Edgar Watson Howe

The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep.

Tina Turner

I'm not wise, but the beginning of wisdom is there; it's like relaxing into - and an acceptance of - things.

Acceptance Wisdom
Plato

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

William Blake

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

William Shakespeare

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Be happy. It's one way of being wise.

Keira Knightley

My upbringing is why I am the person I am today. I have very wise parents.

Roger Ailes

Giving up your core business in search of a phantom audience is not wise.

Andrew Carnegie

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win.

Mel Gibson

And, hey, I'm not under the illusion that everything's just going to be hunky-dory work wise forever. I've never been under that illusion. Things could go away tomorrow.

Thomas More

Ask a woman's advice, and whatever she advises, Do the very reverse and you're sure to be wise.

Baltasar Gracian

The wise does at once what the fool does at last.

Plato

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.

Omar Khayyam

Living Life Tomorrow's fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again.

Sonia Sotomayor

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Edgar Allan Poe

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

Thomas Hobbes

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools.

Epictetus

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

Khalil Gibran

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.

John Milton

When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.

Michel de Montaigne

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

Malcolm X

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.

Thomas Hobbes

Such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.

Ambrose Bierce

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Sandra Day O'Connor

I've always said that at the end of the day, on a legal issue, I think a wise old woman and a wise old man are going to reach the same conclusion.

Epicurus

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

Plutarch

To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.

Benjamin Franklin

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Lao Tzu

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

William Butler Yeats

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

Robert Browning

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!

George Santayana

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

James Russell Lowell

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

Helen Rowland

A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.

Aristotle

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Miguel de Cervantes

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.

Albert Schweitzer

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... the truly wise person is colorblind.

William Osler

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.

William Arthur Ward

It is wise to direct your anger towards problems - not people; to focus your energies on answers - not excuses.

Sonia Sotomayor

I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.

Rachael Stirling

My instinct is to surround myself with the company of wise, witty, wonderful women, and I have a great bank of female friends of all ages.

Steve Buscemi

There's a certain type of character that you can't help but come in contact with growing up and living in Brooklyn and Long Island. A certain mixture of moxie, heart, and a wise guy sense of humor.

Francis Bacon

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

William Blake

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

William Arthur Ward

Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn't always have to be their top priority.

Chanakya

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

Sea
Laura Ingraham

The wise policymaker doesn't assume that any policy adopted in good faith will have good results. Instead, he or she weighs the likely outcome of any new policy based on facts and experience - not sentiments and dreams.

William Arthur Ward

We can learn much from wise words, little from wisecracks, and less from wise guys.

George Santayana

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.

Nicole Kidman

I'd like to be wise. You have to go through a lot to get there, but I'm willing to go through a lot.

Sun Tzu

Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge.

William Arthur Ward

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.

Agatha Christie

Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.

William Butler Yeats

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.

Paulo Coelho

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

Epicurus

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Michel de Montaigne

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn't advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn't wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.

Laura Ingraham

Hope is not the basis for policy. Wise policymakers analyze major issues such as immigration carefully and look at facts and probabilities instead of just hoping for the best.

William Wordsworth

The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.

Andrew Carnegie

I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.

George Burns

Be quick to learn and wise to know.

Anatole France

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.

I think that part of the reason that 'Iron Man' was so successful was that we really chose to break new ground in a new area tonally, cast wise, the way we depict the hero, what his abilities are. It felt fresh in a genre that is beginning to feel stale if it's not done with the proper amount of inspiration and a strong voice or tone.

Chanakya

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

Epictetus

It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.

George Bernard Shaw

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

Margaret Mead

I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.

Benjamin Franklin

Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

Yoko Ono

You can be very wild and still be very wise.

Winston Churchill

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

Arthur Ashe

A wise person decides slowly but abides by these decisions.

Marcus Aurelius

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

William Blake

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

Tree
Walt Whitman

The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.

Chanakya

Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise council keep it secret being determined to carry it into execution.

Antonin Scalia

Being a good person begins with being a wise person. Then, when you follow your conscience, will you be headed in the right direction.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

Benjamin Disraeli

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

D. H. Lawrence

It's bad taste to be wise all the time, like being at a perpetual funeral.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Who is wise in love, love most, say least.