Top 100 Quotes About Wise Men
#1. If all men saw the fair and wise the same men would not have debaters' double strife.
Euripides
#2. The business conduct of the disciples of wise men is truthful and faithful ... He does not allow himself to be made a surety or a guarantor and does not accept the power of attorney ... He lends money and is gracious. He shall not take away business from his fellow man.
Maimonides
#4. It is but too common, of late, to condemn the acts of our predecessors and to pronounce them unjust, unwise, or unpatriotic from not adverting to the circumstances under which they acted. Thus, to judge is to do great injustice to the wise and patriotic men who preceded us.
John C. Calhoun
#6. Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.
H.L. Mencken
#7. Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.
Thomas A. Edison
#8. Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.
Marcus Aurelius
#9. A wise man looks upon men as he does on horses; all their comparisons of title, wealth, and place, he consider but as harness.
Robert Cecil
#10. A wise man had said that your Christian life is like a three-legged stool. The legs are doctrine, experience and practice, which is obedience; and you, will not stay upright unless all three are there. In recent years many Christians have not kept these three together.
J.I. Packer
#11. If the choice is given to us of liberty or security, we must scorn the latter with the proper contempt of free man and the sound judgment of wise men who know that liberty and security are not incompatible in the lives of honest men.
James Farley
#12. For the wise man, every day is a festival.
Plutarch
#13. None But such as are good men can give good things, And that which is not good, is not delicious To a well-govern'd and wise appetite.
John Milton
#14. Everyone loved her, but her greatest sorrow was that she could find no one to love in return, since all the men were much too stupid and ugly to mate with one so beautiful and wise.
L. Frank Baum
#15. I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that we were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life.
Thomas Browne
#16. Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#17. To be free is not necessarily to be wise. Wisdom comes with counsel, with the frank and free conference of untrammeled men united in the common interest.
Woodrow Wilson
#18. The fool who recognizes his foolishness, is a wise man. But the fool who believes himself a wise man, he really is a fool.
Gautama Buddha
#19. why do I want to appear to be drinking more than I am?'
'Make it a habit. Men in their cups are fools, more often than not. And it can be wise to look the fool at times.
Raymond E. Feist
#20. The silence of a wise man is always meaningful.
Leo Strauss
#21. Fools measure actions, after they are done, by the event; wise men beforehand, by the rules of reason and right. The former look to the end, to judge of the act. Let me look to the act, and leave the end with God.
Joseph Hall
#22. A militia law, requiring all men, or with very few exceptions besides cases of conscience, to be provided with arms and ammunition ... is always a wise institution, and, in the present circumstances of our country, indispensable.
John Adams
#23. To the disgrace of men it is seen that there are women both more wise to judge what evil is expected, and more constant to bear it when it happens.
Philip Sidney
#25. It is the fool who is haunted by fears, dread of dangers, oppression of mind, not the wise man.
Gautama Buddha
#26. 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.
Sun Tzu
#27. An ignorant man is always able to say yes or no immediately to any proposition. To a wise man, comparatively few things can be propounded which do not require a response with qualifications, with discriminations, with proportion.
Horace Mann
#28. Immeasurably imperfect it was, but false the impression could not be, for she saw with the eyes made for seeing, and saw indeed what many men are too wise to see.
George MacDonald
#29. A wise man is not governed by others, nor does he try to govern them; he prefers that reason alone prevail.
Jean De La Bruyere
#30. The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.
William Shakespeare
#31. Though a man be wise it is no shame for him to live and learn.
Sophocles
#32. If a man says that it is right to give every one his due, and therefore thinks within his own mind that injury is due from a just man to his enemies but kindness to his friends, he was not wise who said so, for he spoke not the truth, for in no case has it appeared to be just to injure any one.
Plato
#33. To a wise man, the whole earth is open; for the native land of a good soul is the whole earth.
Democritus
#35. Major actions by courageous and wise men will be necessary to avoid our continuing to blunder into the space age like unenlightened and selfish idiots.
Fritz Zwicky
#36. To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do is style.
Roger Ascham
#37. 'Without the help of mathematics,' the wise man continued, 'the art could not advance and all the sciences would perish.'
Julio Cesar De Mello E Souza
#38. It's a wise man who profits by his own experience, but it's a good deal wiser one who lets the rattlesnake bite the other fellow.
Josh Billings
#39. A wise man may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of the deceiver.
Charles Caleb Colton
#40. Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.
Criss Jami
#41. In peace, a wise man makes preparations for war.
Horace
#42. Love is a volcano, the crater of which no wise man will approach too nearly, lest ... he should be swallowed up.
Charles Caleb Colton
#43. The pride of young men requires that they seem wise, despite their inexperience, and the only way to appear all-knowing without going to the tedium of acquiring knowledge, is to hold all knowledge in weary-seeming contempt.
John C. Wright
#44. Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
Plato
#45. The wise man will always reflect concerning the quality not the quantity of life.
Seneca The Younger
#46. Whether religion be true or false, it must be necessarily granted to be the only wise principle and safe hypothesis for a man to live and die by.
John Tillotson
#47. When the wise man opens his mouth, the beauties of his soul present themselves to the view, like the statues in a temple.
Pythagoras
#49. Common men talk bagfuls of religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks a little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action.
Ramakrishna
#50. The wise man does not discriminate; he gathers all the shreds of light, from wherever they may come ...
Umberto Eco
#51. 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
#52. So wise men avoided Usha. The death of her husband ensured that she became inauspicious. The white sari wrapped itself around her shaking body and the lily of her youth wilted before it had even begun to flower.
Paul Haston
#53. The wise man contents himself with what he has, until such time as he invents something better.
Jose Saramago
#54. Tears of tenderness and affection are no disparagement at all, even to great and wise men.
Matthew Henry
#55. The Bible is to us what the star was to the wise men; but if we spend all our time in gazing upon it, observing its motions, and admiring its splendor, without being led to Christ by it, the use of it will be lost on us.
Thomas Adams
#56. A foolish man tells a woman to stop talking, but a wise man tells her that her mouth is extremely beautiful when her lips are closed.
Robert Bloch
#57. The wise man knows nothing if he cannot benefit from his wisdom. Wisdom is not only to be acquired, but also to be utilized.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#58. Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in his beauty deigns to walk.
Charles Spurgeon
#59. The deepest words
of the wise man teach us
the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows
or the sound of the water when it is flowing.
Antonio Machado
#60. Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it.
Charles Caleb Colton
#61. Believe nothing because it is written in books. Believe nothing because wise men say it is so. Believe nothing because it is religious doctrine. Believe it only because you yourself know it to be true.
Gautama Buddha
#62. For one word a man is often deemed to be wise, and for one word he is often deemed to be foolish. We should be careful indeed what we say.
Confucius
#63. Give a drink of water as alms to the birds which go forth at morning, and deem that they have a better right than men [to thy charity]. For their race brings not harm upon thee in any wise, when thou fearest it from thine own race.
Al-Ma'arri
#64. A wise man has dignity without pride; a fool has pride without dignity.
Confucius
#65. Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it.
Blaise Pascal
#66. Where two discourse, if the anger of one rises, he is the wise man who lets the contest fall.
Plutarch
#67. It is little the sign of a wise or good man, to suffer temperance to be transgressed in order to purchase the repute of a generous entertainer.
Francis Atterbury
#68. Noble and wise men once believed in the music of the spheres: noble and wise men still continue to believe in the "moral significance of existence." But one day even this sphere-music will no longer be audible to them! They will wake up and take note that their ears were dreaming.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#69. The wise man can change his mind; the stubborn one, never.
Immanuel Kant
#70. Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.
Bram Stoker
#71. A wise man seeks much counsel ... a fool listens to all of it.
Larry Burkett
#72. The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.
Samuel Johnson
#75. All histories do show, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.
Walter Raleigh
#77. Experience makes more timid men than it does wise ones.
Josh Billings
#78. Think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do.
Aristotle.
#79. Have you not noticed that the wild flowers are becoming scarcer every year? It may be that their wise men have told them to depart till man becomes more human. Perhaps they have migrated to heaven.
Okakura Kakuzo
#80. The wise man should keep the balance between love and power; he should keep the love in his nature ever increasing and expanding, and at the same time strengthen the will so that the heart may not easily be broken.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#81. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#83. We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles. Meantime, within man, is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#84. A woman is a mystery to guide a wise and open man.
Rumi
#85. Sketches Einstein: His Life and Universe A Benjamin Franklin Reader Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Kissinger: A Biography The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (with Evan Thomas)
Walter Isaacson
#86. Wise and prudent men and intelligent conservatives have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing time.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#87. For the need to think can never be stilled by allegedly definite insights of "wise men"; it can be satisfied only through thinking, and the thoughts I had yesterday will satisfy this need today only to the extent that I want and am able to think them anew.
Hannah Arendt
#88. Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
Francis Bacon
#89. One rabbi compared wise men studying the law to children tossing a ball to one another: a first sage said the meaning was this, another said the meaning was that, one gave his opinion, another begged to differ.
Israel Shenker
#90. My mom didn't write, but she loved to read. She liked books 'that made you a little nervous.' Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub were the three wise men of our family bookshelf.
Michael Easton
#91. Too many are not willing to give the Gospel a fair trial. They are too ignorant to speak wisely but not wise enough to speak ignorantly. A man is not a sinner because he is a skeptic; he is a skeptic because he is a sinner.
Vance Havner
#92. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor.
Kurt Vonnegut
#93. The wise man knoweth where to stop, as he runneth in the race of fortune, For experience of old hath taught him, that happiness lingered midway; And many in hot pursuit have hasted to the goal of wealth, But have lost, as they ran, those apples of gold
the mind and the power to enjoy it.
Martin Farquhar Tupper
#94. May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ.
Plato
#95. Men shouldn't fear or hate what they do not know but study it and share it instead. It is both an act of selfishness and cruelty to seek for the destruction of wisdom and the wise, but also to keep silent when witnessing it happening.
Daniel Marques
#96. Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#97. It is the cruelty of men that we must fear, not the wisdom they misuse, and certainly not the wise that possess it.
Daniel Marques
#98. If you can judge a wise man by the color of his skin
Then mister you're a better man than I
Steven Tyler
#99. I care not whether a man is good or evil; all that I care / Is whether he is a wise man or a fool. Go! put off holiness, / And put on intellect.
William Blake
#100. Send a wise man on an errand, and say nothing unto him.
[Send a wise man on an errand, and say nothing to him.]
George Herbert
