The following words of wisdom are focused on inspiring you to stay on the path of applying wisdom in all things. However, not just any wisdom will do. God has the first and final word on wisdom. His words of wisdom are perfect and are therefore distinct from every other definition or declaration of wisdom.
In fact, it is His wisdom alone that is true wisdom. No doubt, we can make helpful clarifications on what is true, however, anything outside or in addition to His wisdom is, by definition, not wisdom.
This tension, between what is true wisdom and what is not, requires that we remain diligent in guarding against what just sounds wise–when in fact, it is only superficially similar. These quotes on wisdom are specifically selected to reflect our need for understanding and applying biblical wisdom.
“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and Bible.”
– President George Washington
“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
– John Wooden
“A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.”
– John C. Maxwell
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”
– Jim Rohn
“For the grace of God has appeared… Instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age;”
– Titus 2:11-13
Wisdom… “nothing we desire compares with her.“
– Proverbs 8:11
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
– Winston Churchill
“We need not all agree, but if we disagree, let us not be disagreeable in our disagreements.”
– M. R. DeHaan
“Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”
– John Wooden
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
– Socrates
“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who’ll argue with you.”
– John Wooden
“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”
– Nelson Mandela
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
– Lewis Carroll
“Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.”
– 1 Cor. 16:13-14
“Honesty is the best policy.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“…meditating on truth shapes the soul.”
– John Piper
“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 Spurgeon
“Greatness is smallness, servanthood, humility. It is not power, ideas and influence.”
– Ann Swindell
“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.“
– James 3:13
“We often repeat the exciting points of these stories—Moses rising against Pharaoh and Jesus healing the lame and raising the dead—rather than the years of preparation or confusion that preceded them.”
– Liuan Huska
“The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.”
– Solomon Ibn Gabriol
“The noblest question in the world is What good may I do in it.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”
– Winston Churchill
“…grit… sometimes it is stronger, sometimes weaker, but the constancy of your tenacity is based on the degree to which you can access, ignite, and control it.”
– Margaret M. Perlis
“God and I and love. We can change the world. You wait. You watch. You’ll see.”
– Ann Kiemel Anderson
“If happiness could be found in having material things, and in being able to indulge yourself in things that you consider pleasurable, then we, in America, would be deliriously happy. We would be telling one another frequently of our unparalleled bliss, rather than trading tranquilizer prescriptions.”
– John Gardner
“Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.”
– Brené Brown
“It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good.”
– Helen Keller
“Life is like a game of chess. Use ALL your pieces wisely. Don’t underestimate your opponent.”
– Scott Veigel
“The wise man will not hurt his mind for the passing pleasure of the body.”
– Wabasha — or Wapasha — I (1718-1806), American Indian warrior and the chief of a band of Santee Sioux
“There is a price to godliness and godliness is never on sale.”
– Jerry Bridges
“A ministry that costs nothing, accomplishes nothing. No bleeding, no blessing.”
– J. H. Jowett
“There are few things so powerful as transforming truth communicated by a transformed life.”
– Biblical Ministries Worldwide
“For whose cause are you gaining the most ground?”
– Scott Veigel
“Don’t just let them hear you say it. Let them see you believe it.”
– Scott Veigel
“The human spirit fails unless the Holy Spirit fills.”
– Dr. George Sweeting
“Faith is reason gone courageous.”
– Thomas Graham
“God takes your prayer only as seriously as you do.”
– unknown
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
– President Calvin Coolidge
“…we become what we behold.”
– John Piper
“I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God; first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.”
– Hudson Taylor
“Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and say ‘Why not?’“
– Robert F. Kennedy
“The frontiers of the gospel are never advanced by men and women of caution.”
– J. Oswald Chambers
“He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
– Jim Elliot
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
– Winston Churchill
“The greatness of a man’s powers is the measure of his surrender.”
– William Booth
“If any man be given over to sex appetite he is harboring a rattlesnake, whose sting is rottenness and sure death.”
– Wabasha — or Wapasha — I (1718-1806), American Indian warrior and the chief of a band of Santee Sioux
“Real faith is always increased by opposition, while false confidence is damaged and discouraged by it.”
– J. B. Strong
“Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.”
– Albert Einstien
“The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it.”
– D.L. Moody
“The glory is not in never failing, but rising every time you fail.”
– Chinese Proverb
“In God’s reign the last become first, the misfits are welcomed, prejudice is crushed, old things are made new, busted things become beautiful, grace trumps works, dependence means freedom, dying is gain and people can rejoice when they fall short.”
– Alan Briggs
“Wise men are not always silent, but know when to be.”
– unknown
“Boldness is something we lose. Get it back. There is something to be said about regressing back to a child. They are unashamed of saying it like it is. Add just a bit of tact, and unleashing the truth might even be welcomed.”
– Scott Veigel
“Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.”
– Josh Billings
“But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.”
– James 3:17
“A mind, as a parachute, functions only when open.”
– unknown
“You are making progress if each mistake you make is a new one.”
– unknown
“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.”
– Sir Isaac Newton
“Happiness is enhanced by others but does not depend on others.”
– unknown
“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
– Henry Ford
“Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.”
– Lord Chesterfield
“Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
“Life is not a ‘having and a getting’ but a ‘being and a becoming’.”
– Matthew Arnold
“The greatest calamity is not to have failed, but to have failed to try.”
– unknown
“Leadership is action, not position.”
– Donald H. McGannon
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
– Winston Churchill
“A wise man will make more opportunities that he finds.”
– Francis Bacon
“The reason you don’t have more, is because you settle for less.”
– Edwin Louis Cole
“Don’t pretend to be what you don’t intend to be.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Wise men still seek Him.”
– unknown
“May you live every day of your life.”
― Jonathan Swift
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
– William Arthur Ward
“Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one, and Helen Keller is the other.”
– Erma Bombeck
“A man is only as good as what he loves.”
– Saul Bellow (winner of the Nobel Prize for literature)
“To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.”
– John W. Gardner
“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”
– Winston Churchill
“God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.”
– Oswald Chambers
“I define ego as Edging God Out.”
– Kenneth Blanchard
“Lookin’ back is a bad habit.”
– Charles Portis, True Grit
“It is a sin to not want your life to count for winning more and more people to Christ.”
– John Piper
“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”
– Mark Twain
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
– John Wooden
“Lessons in life will be repeated until they are learned.”– Frank Sonnenberg
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
– Plato
“It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr
“Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.”
– C. S. Lewis
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
– Mark Twain
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
– Aristotle
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it”
– Albert Einstein
“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
– Zig Ziglar
“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.”
– Will Rogers
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.”
– Plato
“Be careful with your words. Once they are said, they can be only forgiven, not forgotten.”
– Unknown
“Do what is right, not what is easy nor what is popular.”
– Roy T. Bennett
“Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not able to tell the difference.”
– Mark Twain
“Wise is he in the day of trouble who knows his true source of strength and who fails not to pray.”
– E. M. Bounds
“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him… Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making? ‘ or ‘Your work has no handles’?”
– Isaiah 45:9
“A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”
– Bruce Lee
“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
– Albert Einstein
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
– African Proverb
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
– Edmund Burke
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
– Dr. Seuss
“Change your thoughts and you change your world.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle
“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
– Will Rogers
“Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”
– John Wooden
“When in doubt, don’t.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”
– Henry Ford
“The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“My father said there were two kinds of people in the world: givers and takers. The takers may eat better, but the givers sleep better.”
– Marlo Thomas
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
– Albert Einstein
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
– Dr. Seuss
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“Wise men learn by other men’s mistakes, fools by their own.”
– H. G. Bohn
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
– Epictetus
“Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one’s awareness of one’s ignorance.”
– Anthony de Mello
“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.”
– Doug Larson
“Wisdom is found only in truth.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”
– J.K. Rowling
“Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.”
– David Starr Jordan
“Real truth will always move you from something you understand, to something you stand under.”
– Tim Keller
“Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves.”
– Eugene Peterson
“Knowing the Bible is one thing, but knowing the Author is everything.”
– D.A. Carson
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“True wisdom is not just about knowing the right answers but also about living the right way.”
– John MacArthur
“The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.”
– Baltasar Gracian
“Truth without love is harsh; love without truth is blind.”
– Augustine
“Let us not become keepers of the shrine of dead ideas.”
– Wendell Berry
“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”
– Winston Churchill
“Truth is not just a set of propositions to be believed but a person to be followed – Jesus Christ.”
– Tim Keller
Do you have other quotes on wisdom? What pearls of wisdom have you come across that have been especially meaningful to you? Leave quotes on biblical wisdom that you would recommend in the comments below.
Explore wisdom further:
Define Wisdom
Scriptures on Wisdom
New Testament Scriptures on Wisdom
Proverbs Scriptures on Wisdom
New Testament Scriptures on Wisdom
The Right Life Manifesto
