These true wisdom quotes will inspire you. True wisdom is the ability to differentiate between good or bad, making excellent and decisive judgments from one’s experience and knowledge gained.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging true wisdom quotes, true wisdom sayings, and true wisdom proverbs.
Best True Wisdom quotes
- “True wisdom is a thing very extraordinary. Happy are they that have it: and next to them, not those many that think they have it, but those few that are sensible of their own defects and imperfections, and know that they have it not.” ~ John Tillotson
- “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” ~ Aristotle
- “True wisdom consists of tracing effects to their causes.” ~ Oliver Goldsmith
- “Humility is the only true wisdom by which we prepare our minds for all the possible changes of life.” ~ George Arliss
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“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” ~ Laozi
- “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.” ~ Socrates
- “Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.” ~ Euripides
- “True wisdom listens more, talks less, and can get along with all types of people.” ~ Kiana Tom
- “Follow your instincts. That’s where true wisdom manifests itself.” ~ Oprah Winfrey
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“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” ~ Socrates
- “True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.” ~ Akhenaton
- “It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is unobstructed: without the latter it is deceptive.” ~ Richard Whately
- “All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “Wisdom is knowing what you don’t know.” ~ Socrates
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“To know that one knows what one knows, and to know that one doesn’t know what one doesn’t know, there lies true wisdom.” ~ Confucius
- “True wisdom lies in one’s confession about the limits of one’s knowledge.” ~ Socrates
- “Become aware that you already possess all the inner wisdom, strength, and creativity needed to make your dreams come true.” ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach
- “True wisdom is knowing what you don’t know” ~ Confucius
- “When we allow ourselves to feel what we are feeling without trying to understand it, explain it, or judge it-we reach a point where the true wisdom reveals itself.” ~ Michael Eisen
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“Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirthfulness. If you would know aught, be gay before it.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “Unhappy is that Grandeur which makes us too great to be good; and that Wit which sets us at a distance from true Wisdom.” ~ Mary Astell
- “With caution judge of probability. Things deemed unlikely, e’en impossible, experience oft hath proved to be true.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “Guru Arjun tells us that the truth we seek is within ourselves, and I agree. The answers to many of our greatest desires, needs, and longings are inside. We only need to know how to retrieve them. The most powerful vehicle for retrieving our longed for answers is applied intelligence, which is the combination of information and experience. Applied intelligence brings true wisdom because it includes experience, usually on a deep level.” ~ Dharma Singh Khalsa
- “True wisdom, laboring to expound, heareth others readily;
False wisdom, sturdy to deny, closeth up her mind to argument.” ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper -
“True wisdom is to see and understand your relationship with the universe. When you gain that relational knowledge, then you are wise.” ~ Frederick Lenz
- “True wisdom is free of the dramas of culture or religion and should bring us only a sense of peace and happiness.” ~ Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
- “A boy will learn more true wisdom in a public school in a year than by a private education in five. It is not from masters, but from their equals, that youth learn a knowledge of the world.” ~ Oliver Goldsmith
- “True wisdom, indeed, springs from the wide brain which is fed from the deep heart; and it is only when age warms its withering conceptions at the memory of its youthful fire, when it makes experience serve aspiration, and knowledge illumine the difficult paths through which thoughts thread their way into facts,–it is only then that age becomes broadly and nobly wise.” ~ Edwin Percy Whipple
- “It is among children only, and as children only, that you will find medicine for your healing and true wisdom for your teaching.” ~ John Ruskin
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“In this sullen apathy, neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found.” ~ David Hume
- “Why should we desire the destruction of human passions? Take passions from human beings and what is left? The great object should be not to destroy passions, but to make them obedient to the intellect. To indulge passion to the utmost is one form of intemperance – to destroy passion is another. The reasonable gratification of passion under the domination of the intellect is true wisdom and perfect virtue.” ~ Robert Green Ingersoll
- “Better guide the young than reclaim them when old For the voice of true wisdom is calling “To rescue the fallen is good, but tis best To prevent other people from falling” Better close up the source of temptation and crime Than deliver from dungeon or gallery Better put a strong fence round the top of the cliff Than an ambulance down in the valley.” ~ Joseph Malins
- “True perfection seems imperfect,
yet it is perfectly itself.
True fullness seems empty,
yet it is fully present.
True straightness seems crooked.
True wisdom seems foolish.
True art seems artless.
The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets the Tao speak for itself.” ~ Laozi - “Gratitude is the beginning of wisdom. Stated differently, true wisdom cannot be obtained unless it is built on a foundation of true humility and gratitude.” ~ Gordon B. Hinckley
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“The true Wisdom is in recognizing our own ignorance.” ~ Socrates
- “If true, rarely beautiful. If beautiful, rarely true.” ~ Mark Twain
- “True wisdom, in general, consists in energetic determination.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
- “The wisdom of samadhi is quite different. Higher-level wisdom cannot be written down. It cannot be spoken. True wisdom is the knowledge of the universe that is beyond physical expression.” ~ Frederick Lenz
- “The invention of writing will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.” ~ Socrates
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“True wisdom is to know the extent of what you don’t know quite as well as you know what you do know.” ~ Gore Vidal
- “It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato’s point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Do you wish the world were better? Let me tell you what to do: Set a watch upon your actions, Keep them always straight and true.” ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- “Why should I laugh?’ asked the old man. ‘Madness in youth is true wisdom. Go, young man, follow your dream, and if you do not find the happiness that you seek, at any rate you will have had the happiness of seeking it.” ~ Andrew Lang
- “But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine. If he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal.” ~ Plato
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“Christ is the true light of the world; it is through him alone that true wisdom is imparted to the mind.” ~ Jonathan Edwards
- “True wisdom is seeing what is beneficial to your eternal life, and managing your life according to that. You do this when you not only know these things and grasp them with your understanding, but also will and do them.” ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
- “True wisdom is plenty of experience, observation, and reflection. False wisdom is plenty of ignorance, arrogance, and impudence.” ~ Josh Billings
- “True wisdom comes from the overcoming of suffering and sin. All true wisdom is therefore touched with sadness.” ~ Whittaker Chambers
- “All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
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“True wisdom knows it must comprise some nonsense as a compromise, lest fools should fail to find it wise.” ~ Piet Pieterszoon Hein
- “In Buddhism, compassion always goes with wisdom. Compassion without wisdom is not understood to be true compassion, and wisdom without compassion is not true wisdom.” ~ Masao Abe
- “Why is wisdom so fair? Why is beauty so wise? Because all else is temporary, while beauty and wisdom are the only real and constant aspects of truth that can be perceived by human means. And I don’t mean the kind of surface beauty that fades with age, or the sort of shallow wisdom that gets lost in platitudes. True beauty grips your gut and squeezes your lungs, and makes you see with utmost clarity exactly what is before you. True wisdom then steps in, to interpret, illuminate, and form a life-altering insight.” ~ Vera Nazarian
- “The true wisdom of man consists in the knowledge of God the creator and Redeemer.” ~ John Calvin , Wisdom quotes God
- “The true wisdom of the philosopher ought to insist in enjoying everything. Yet we apply ourselves to dissecting and destroying everything that is good in itself, that has virtue, albeit the virtue there is in mere illusions. Nature gives us this life like a toy to a weak child. We want to see how it all works; we break everything. There remains in our hands, and before our eyes, stupid and opened too late, the sterile wreckage, fragments that will not again make a whole. The good is so simple.” ~ Eugene Delacroix
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“True wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in molding our conduct according to her laws and model.” ~ Seneca the Younger
- “The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
- “Older people often mistakenly consider that the young people do not care about their country, but the reverse is actually true.” ~ Peter Cosgrove
- “Never be proud but show humility towards others, true wisdom lies in being humble.” ~ Shri Radhe Maa
- “A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.” ~ Shashi Tharoor , True wisdom quotes love
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“True wisdom consists in respecting the simple things we do” ~ Paulo Coelho
- “True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.” ~ John Calvin
- “Our true wisdom is to embrace with meek docility, and without reservation, whatever the holy scriptures have delivered.” ~ John Calvin
- “No power of earth, or hell, men or devils, can possibly stand against the word of God; and hence it is the very height of folly and wild madness for anyone to set up his thoughts or reasonings in opposition to the plain statements of Holy Scripture; and, on the other hand, it is the beginning and end of all true wisdom to submit in all things to the absolute authority of that Word which is settled forever in Heaven.” ~ Charles Henry Mackintosh
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“True wisdom for a general is vigorous determination.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
- “Lord Krishna… proclaims Self-realization, true wisdom, as the highest branch of all human knowledge-the king of all sciences, the very essence of dharma (“religion”)-for it alone permanently uproots the cause of man’s threefold suffering and reveals to him his true nature of Bliss. Self-realization is yoga or “oneness” with truth-the direct perception or experience of truth by the all-knowing intuitive faculty of the soul.” ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
