101 Fascinating Wisdom Quotes From The Best Minds
People say that a broken heart and pain from life teaches you a lot of life’s lessons. The saying could be correct to a very large extent. Wisdom is not something that is grown on trees.
As you grow older and gain insights you become wise enough to judge what is right and what is wrong for you. However, there is nothing like some extra wisdom gained and that is what we intended to do.
We have compiled a list of 101 Fascinating Wisdom Quotes from The Best Minds just for you. After you read these quotes you would understand life with deeper insights and also hope to gain some fresh perspectives about the way it works.
1. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt
2. “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
― Maurice Switzer
3. “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare
4. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain
5. “When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable.”
― Jess C. Scott
6. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle
7. “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov
8. “In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain
9. “There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.” Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas
10. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
― Aristotle
11. “The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.”
― Abigail Van Buren
12. “Think before you speak. Read before you think.”
― Fran Lebowitz
13. “The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”
― Paulo Coelho
14. “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucious
15. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
16. “You do not write your life with words…You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”
― Patrick Ness
17. “God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.”
― Elbert Hubbard
18. “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
― Albert Einstein
19. “The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
20. “The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.”
― Marjorie Pay Hinckley
21. “Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.”
― Kahlil Gibran
22. “Don’t Gain The World & Lose Your Soul, Wisdom Is Better Than Silver Or Gold.”
― Bob Marley
23. “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
― Joseph Campbell
24. “Don’t waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.”
― Paulo Coelho
25. “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”
― Sharon Salzberg
26. “Even strength must bow to wisdom sometimes.”
― Rick Riordan
27. “We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― Leo Tolstoy
28. “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
― Bruce Lee
29.“The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”
― Maya Angelou
30. “He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.”
― Confucius
31. “The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
― Voltaire
32. “Pain is a pesky part of being human, I’ve learned it feels like a stab wound to the heart, something I wish we could all do without, in our lives here. Pain is a sudden hurt that can’t be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing. Pain feels like a fast stab wound to the heart. But then healing feels like the wind against your face when you are spreading your wings and flying through the air! We may not have wings growing out of our backs, but healing is the closest thing that will give us that wind against our faces.”
― C. JoyBell C.
33. “Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.”
― Margaret Drabble
34. “Learn to light a candle in the darkest moments of someone’s life. Be the light that helps others see; it is what gives life its deepest significance.”
― Roy T. Bennett
35. “There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. Other people will try to make you miserable; don’t help them by doing the job yourself.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton
36. “Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.”
― Anne Bradstreet
37. “You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
― Sharon Salzberg
38. “Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.”
― Helen Keller
40. “Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell
41. “That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending – performing. You get to love your pretence. It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act – and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you’re trying to steal their most precious possession.”
― Jim Morrison
42. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
― Harper Lee
43. “Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde
44. “Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”
― Leo F. Buscaglia
45. “Never complain, never explain. Resist the temptation to defend yourself or make excuses.”
― Brian Tracy
46. “Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”
― A.A. Milne
47. “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
48. “Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”
― Thomas Jefferson
49. “This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi
50. “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
― Abraham Lincoln
51. “We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
― Alan Watts
52. “The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
― Oscar Wilde
53. “As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all – the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.”
― J.K. Rowling
54. “Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you’ll never meet them. All right, so we do the best we can. Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter. Most people make too much of it. On these grounds a good fuck is not to be entirely scorned. But that’s the result of a chance meeting too. You’re damned right. Drink up. We’ll have another.”
― Charles Bukowski
55. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis
56. “I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”
― Umberto Eco
57. “When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.”
― Harper Lee
58. “The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
59. “The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud – the obstacles of life and its suffering. … The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. … Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. ”
― Goldie Hawn
60. “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
― Albert Einstein
61. “It’s not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it’s what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki
62. “There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
63. “It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters,”
― Amit Ray
64. “Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you secruity and friendship and didn’t ask for anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly. ”
― Cornelia Funke
65. “A man is not called wise because he talks and talks again; but if he is peaceful, loving and fearless then he is in truth called wise.”
― Dhammapada
66. “But magic is neither good nor evil. It is a tool, like a knife. Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil.”
― Rick Riordan
67. “No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
― Ernest Hemingway
68. “Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
69. “Transformation is my favorite game and in my experience, anger and frustration are the result of you not being authentic somewhere in your life or with someone in your life. Being fake about anything creates a block inside of you. Life can’t work for you if you don’t show up as you.”
― Jason Mraz
70. “If you have a dream, don’t just sit there. Gather courage to believe that you can succeed and leave no stone unturned to make it a reality.”
― Dr Roopleen
71. “Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it…Don’t allow his anger to become your anger.”
― Bohdi Sanders
72. “I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”
― Orson Scott Card
73. “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
74. “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
― Steve Jobs
75. “Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”
― Hemingway
76. “In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.”
― Octavia Butler
77. “Now I understand that one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.”
― Daniel Keyes
78. “If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don’t tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don’t understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions.”
― Miguel Ruiz
79. “Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”
― Epictetus
80. “It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.”
― Brian Tracy
81. “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
― William James
82. “Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
83. “Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven
84. “I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back.”
― Maya Angelou
85. “Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”
― Epicurus
86. “Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”
― Socrates
87. “Don’t take the high ground and assume you already know what you’ll do. The truth is, when it comes to someone you love, you’ll find there isn’t anything you won’t do.”
― Richelle Mead
88. “I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. ”
― Henry David Thoreau
89. “Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.”
― Carl Sagan
90. “I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.”
― Hermann Hesse
91. “Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
― Harper Lee
92. “Conquer the angry one by not getting angry; conquer the wicked by goodness; conquer the stingy by generosity, and the liar by speaking the truth.
― Siddhārtha Gautama
93. “Always forgive, but never forget, else you will be a prisoner of your own hatred, and doomed to repeat your mistakes forever.”
― Wil Zeus
94. “An acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri
95. “Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically divergent; a similar stance as we look at the stars and think of the marvelous strangeness of the universe – these are what build a marriage. And it is never to be taken for granted.”
― Madeleine L’Engle
96. “Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.”
― Kahlil Gibran
97. “I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense.
― Eve Ensler
98. “Time is not the great teacher. Experience is. A man may live a whole life, but if he never leaves his home to experience that life, he dies knowing nothing. A mere child who has suffered and lived can be the wiser of the two.”
― Lynsay Sands
99. “But that’s how memory works,” Bitterblue said quietly. “Things disappear without your permission, then come back again without your permission.” And sometimes they came back incomplete and warped.”
― Kristin Cashore
100. “Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.”
― Alan Watts
101. “There are women who make things better… simply by showing up. There are women who make things happen. There are women who make their way. There are women who make a difference. And women who make us smile. There are women of wit and wisdom who- through strength and courage- make it through. There are women who change the world everyday.Women like you.”
― Ashley Rice
