Top 50 Quotes About Not Being Wise
#1. If you don't listen to your animal instincts, you are placing too much importance on knowledge thereby not being wise.
Karen Salmansohn
#2. Heaven is in everything: follow the light, hide in the cloudiness and begin in what is. Do this and your understanding will be like not understanding and your wisdom will be like not being wise. By not being wise you will become wise later.
Zhuangzi
#3. Prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them.
C.S. Lewis
#4. Do you not know ... that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#5. I'm not afraid of the opinions of others - but of being needed and coming up short ...
John Geddes
#6. That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men. Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise, take great delight to shew what they think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs.
Thomas Hobbes
#7. A wise man once said that any human being is capable of infinite achievement, so long as it's not the work they're supposed to be doing.
K.J. Parker
#8. Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise.
Aristotle.
#9. Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do.
Lydia M. Child
#10. Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#11. Religious unity does not come so easily. It is not a piece of pie, which you can buy in the shop. It takes sincere efforts from every single human being on this planet.
Abhijit Naskar
#12. When we read Paul, we are reading somebody else's mail - and unless we know the situation being addressed, his letters can be quite opaque ... It is wise to remember that when we are reading letters never intended for us, any problems of understanding are ours and not theirs.
Marcus J. Borg
#13. How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?
Mary Wollstonecraft
#15. What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.
Thomas Sowell
#16. Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.
A.J.P. Taylor
#17. For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.
Plato
#18. It is written, 'Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves' (Mt. 10:16). Being like serpents means not ignoring the attacks and wiles of the devil. Like is quickly shown to like. The simplicity of the dove denotes purity of action.
Syncletica Of Alexandria
#19. If, presume not to God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise, and rudely great.
Alexander Pope
#20. Those who wish their virtue to be advertised are not striving for virtue but for renown. Are you not willing to be just without being renowned? Nay, indeed you must often be just and be at the same time disgraced. And then, if you are wise, let ill repute, well won, be a delight. Farewell.
Seneca.
#21. Either a wise man will not go into bunkers, or, being in, he will endure such things as befall him with patience.
Andrew Lang
#22. Fate does not invite ugly boring people to save the world; and if you do try to save the world (without being beautiful, strong, clever, or wise), you will soon die pointlessly and how much adventure is there in that?
James Alan Gardner
#24. Lucky are you, reader, if you happen not to be of that sex to whom it is forbidden all good things; to whom liberty is denied; to whom almost all virtues are denied; lucky are you if you are one of those who can be wise without its being a crime.
Marie De Gournay
#27. The point of the spiritual revolution is not to become a good Buddhist, but to become a wise and compassionate human being, to awaken from our life of complacency and ignorance and to be a buddha.
Noah Levine
#28. Man, being not only a religious, but also a social being, requires for the promotion of his rational happiness religious institutions, which, while they give a proper direction to devotion, at the same time make a wise and profitable improvement of his social feelings.
Hosea Ballou
#29. It is not wise, or even possible, to divorce private behavior from public leadership ... By its very nature, true leadership carries with it the burden of being an example.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#30. Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.
E.B. White
#31. If you can wait and not be tired of waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in lies. Or being hated, don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.
Rudyard Kipling
#32. Wise is the man who does not disdain any character and instead, examining him with a searching look, plumbs him to the very main-springs of his being.
Nikolai Gogol
#33. Now that we are, as you say, 'in the same boat,' would it not be wise for us to have another conference ... and the sooner the better.
Winston Churchill
#34. You can not have peace with just feelings. It comes only about by prayer and being on the journey. Like the wise men, find your peace this Christmas.
Phil Mitchell
#35. it's at least possible that God is wise enough to foresee that we need some pain for reasons which we may not understand but which he foresees as being necessary to some eventual good. Therefore, he's not being evil by allowing that pain to exist.
Lee Strobel
#36. Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise council keep it secret being determined to carry it into execution.
Chanakya
#37. Study then, but study first that which will most help you to help others. Work patiently at your studies, not that men may think you wise, not even that you may have the happiness of being wise, but because only the wise man can be wisely helpful.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#38. Being success is not an easy thing. It need courage, fight, brave, and time. Let them judge. Just show them the result later. Because a wise man said that success is the biggest revenge.
Sheilanda Khoirunnisa
#39. I was the worst kind of fool. When I look back on that August night, changed forever by all my wounds and all my suffering, that undamaged Odd Thomas seems like a different human being from me, immeasurably more confident than I am now, still able to hope, but not as wise, and I mourn for him.
Dean Koontz
#40. Heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there; be lowly wise.
Think only what concerns thee and thy being;
Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there
Live, in what state, condition, or degree,
Contented that thus far hath been revealed.
John Milton
#41. When Knowledge Went North (excerpt)
As for us,
We came nowhere near being right,
Since we have the answers.
"For he who knows does not speak
He who speaks does not know"
And "The Wise Man gives instruction
Without the use of speech.
Thomas Merton
#42. Total commitment is about being wise and smart, not necessarily being noble or virtuous. It's not so much about self-denial but about logic and common sense. It's not so much about what you lose; it's about what you gain.
Chip Ingram
#43. I feel more comfortable confidence-wise. You get to the NHL, and you're nervous about trying things. With experience, you're not as afraid of being creative.
Martin St. Louis
#44. Sometimes we find ourselves fighting tooth and nail for something we think we want, when, in reality, what we really want comes not from giving up, but from being wise enough to choose which battles are worth fighting.
Samantha Hartley
#45. It is not much good being wise among fools and sane among lunatics.
Robert Greene
#46. Wow," she said. "It's like you're teaching me something and being all wise."
"You are not easy to get along with," Skulduggery said.
Derek Landy
#47. People can have the best of intentions when they tell their loved ones how they should be living their lives. But often times, when we are in struggle, we are seeking to be supported, not solved.
Jaeda DeWalt
#48. Folly consists not in committing Folly, but in being incapable of concealing it. All men make mistakes, but the wise conceal the blunders they have made, while fools make them public. Reputation depends more on what is hidden than on what is seen. If you can't be good, be careful.
Baltasar Gracian
#50. Returning to the question of being feared or loved, I conclude that since men love at their own will and fear at the will of the prince, a wise prince must build a foundation on what is his own, and not on what belongs to others.
Niccolo Machiavelli
