Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.

Abigail Van Buren (1918 - ), 1978

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics¹ are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.

Cullen Hightower

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797), We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, 2011

As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680), Reflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales 1655

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)

The wisest mind has something yet to learn.

George Santayana (1863 - 1952)

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine² that age brings wisdom.

H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace (65 BC - 8 BC), Odes

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

James Boswell (1740 - 1795), Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791

Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable.

John Patrick, The Teahouse of the August moon, Act I, scene I, 1957

That which seems the height of absurdity³ in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.

John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)

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 err⁴.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922)

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

Marilyn vos Savant

It is not white hair that engenders⁵ wisdom.

Menander (342 BC - 292 BC), Unidentified fragment

Inner wisdom is more important than wealth. The more you spend it, the more you gain.

Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), Stanford Commencement Adress, 2008

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria

Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.

Robbie Gass

Ask counsel of both times-of the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626), Of Great Place, 1625

Wisdom outweighs⁶ any wealth.

Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC), Antigone

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC - 184 BC), Miles Gloriosus

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC - 184 BC), Trinummus

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .

Unknown

Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible⁷ of proof, is its own proof.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.

William Saroyan (1908 - 1981)

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "As You Like It", Act 5 scene 1