Wisdom Quotes
Wisdom quotes are the ones that get requoted for millennia, and this collection leans heavily on the source: Stoic philosophers who treated a single sentence as a complete argument, alongside literary voices who arrived at similar conclusions from entirely different lives. What holds them together isn't agreement — Nietzsche and Confucius rarely would have agreed on much — but a shared instinct for saying more with less. Use the related-quotes links on each page to see how a single idea echoes across very different authors and centuries.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.”
“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
“Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.”
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
“For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.”
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
“Things do not change; we change.”
“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”
“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.”
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
“This above all: to thine own self be true.”
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
“I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.”
“Forever is composed of nows.”