Wise People Quotes

“I don't fancy colors of the face, I'm always attracted to colors of the brain.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

“Wise people understand the need to consult experts; only fools are confident they know everything.”
― Ken Poirot

“Every fool has an idea how to change the world. Wise people think about how to improve the world around them.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“Publicity is just a foolish act done by wise people confidently, to fool the world.”
― Pratik Akkawar

“Wise people offer their wisdom for free and accept all gifts, for they know that the universe is not giving them gifts, but tools they will need on their road to wisdom.”
― Charbel Tadros

“A smart man knows when it is time to keep quiet, and when to speak. Moreover, a wise man considers the consequences of what he intends to say.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“The wise person is there not to be walked over but to stand up for the actual truth, to call the other person out when need be, if they are hiding from some hard reality. “Receptivity without confrontation leads to a bland neutrality that serves nobody,” the theologian Henri Nouwen wrote. “Confrontation without receptivity leads to an oppressive aggression which hurts everybody.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“The best way to achieve great success is to learn from wise people. Use them extensively with love, gratitude, and humility.”
― Debasish Mridha

“Wise people are those who help others to become better than they are.”
― Gift Gugu Mona

“Wise people do not claim to know it all, they always prefer to learn from others.”
― Gift Gugu Mona

“Wisdom is the speech of God sent to the spirit of wise people.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“Corrupt people will never admit that they get benefit from wise people.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“Wise people behave according to the opposite.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“I’ve come to believe that wise people don’t tell us what to do; they start by witnessing our story. They take the anecdotes, rationalizations, and episodes we tell, and see us in a noble struggle. They see the way we’re navigating the dialectics of life—intimacy versus independence, control versus uncertainty— and understand that our current self is just where we are right now, part of a long continuum of growth.

The really good confidants—the people we go to when we are troubled—are more like coaches than philosopher-kings. They take in your story, accept it, but push you to clarify what it is you really want, or to name the baggage you left out of your clean tale. They ask you to probe into what is really bothering you, to search for the deeper problem underneath the convenient surface problem you’ve come to them for help about. Wise people don’t tell you what to do; they help you process your own thoughts and emotions. They enter with you into your process of meaning-making and then help you expand it, push it along. All choice involves loss: If you take this job, you don’t take that one. Much of life involves reconciling opposites: I want to be attached, but I also want to be free. Wise people create a safe space where you can navigate the ambiguities and contradictions we all wrestle with. They prod and lure you along until your own obvious solution emerges into view.

Their essential gift is receptivity, the capacity to receive what you are sending. This is not a passive skill. The wise person is not just keeping her ears open. She is creating an atmosphere of hospitality, an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to set aside their fear of showing weakness, their fear of confronting themselves. She is creating an atmosphere in which people swap stories, trade confidences. In this atmosphere people are free to be themselves, encouraged to be honest with themselves.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“Wise people help you come up with a different way of looking at yourself, your past, and the world around you. Very often they focus your attention on your relationships, the in-between spaces that are so easy to overlook. How can this friendship or this marriage be nourished and improved? The wise person sees your gifts and potential, even the ones you do not see. Being seen in this way has a tendency to turn down the pressure, offering you some distance from your immediate situation, offering hope.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen