Subject: Intelligence » Wisdom (Page 2)

Silence: True wisdom’s best reply.

As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness; our bad luck we give the gods credit for.

(1818 – 1885) humorist

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around; but when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

(1826 – 1877) English economist & journalist

All the unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains; what good are brains to a man? … they only unsettle him.

(1881 – 1975) English writer & humorist

He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.

(1706 – 1790) American statesman, author, scientist & inventor

Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.

(1932 – 2009) author, poet & critic

Ignoramus: A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.

(1842 – 1914) author & satirist

It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.

(1919 – 1990) educator & writer

Half of being smart is knowing what you are dumb about.

David Gerrold (1944 – ) science fiction author

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

(1941 – 2008) British journalist, musician &broadcaster

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

(1817 – 1862) American author, poet, philosopher,, naturalist & historian

He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty.

(1880 – ?) American author

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

(1894 – 1961) author, cartoonist & humorist

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

(1889 – 1974) American intellectual, writer, reporter & political commentator

Experience is a comb which nature gives us when we are bald.

Every man is a fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists of not exceeding the limit.

(1868 – 1930) cartoonist, humorist & journalist

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen.

(1879 – 1955) German-born physicist

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

(1872 – 1970) British philosopher, mathematician, historian & social critic

A loaded wagon makes no noise.

Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist