A Quote by Socrates

Wisdom is knowing when you don't know

Socrates

Quote Topics

Know Knowing Wisdom

Quote Author

Socrates
Greek - Philosopher
469 BC - 399 BC

Wisdom and knowledge can best be understood together. Knowledge is learning, the power of the mind to understand and describe the universe. Wisdom is knowing how to apply knowledge and how not to apply it. Knowledge is knowing what to say; wisdom is knowing whether or not to say it. Knowledge gives answers; wisdom asks questions. Knowledge can be taught, wisdom grows from experience.

Starhawk

Wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know.

Chuck Smith

Wisdom is knowing what you don't know.

Socrates

Wisdom is not book learning but, rather, a quality or state of knowing what is true or right coupled with the judgment to discern constructive action. Wisdom is the insight and intuition contained in the proverbial still, small voice that only a quiet mind can hear and know.

Sue Thoele

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

True wisdom is knowing what you don't know

Confucius

Wisdom is knowing how little we know.

Socrates

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Socrates

Wisdom is knowing. Skill is know how to do it. Virtue is doing it.

David Starr Jordan

The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown.

Plato

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.

Herbert Hoover

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as in knowing what to do next.

Herbert Hoover

Knowing that you are nothing is Wisdom, Knowing that you are everything is Love.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

Lao Tzu

Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning. If the deep truths physicists describe about the origin and functioning of the universe have little practical import and do not change our picture of the meaning of the universe and our place within it, then knowing them would not count as wisdom.