Wisdom Quotes
“All I know is that I know nothing” is flagged as misattributed to Socrates. The nearest thing in Plato is the end of Book I of the Republic, where Socrates concludes that he knows nothing about what justice is. That is a narrower claim than the slogan, and part of an argument rather than a statement about himself.
Most of the entries here come from poets and playwrights, with Shakespeare, Edward Young and Pope at the top, which fits: wisdom is rarely stated in a sentence of its own, more often spoken by a character or tucked into a couplet. For the sourced ones, William James in The Principles of Psychology (1890): “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” Or Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790): “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”
Away, thou strange justifier of thyself, to be wiser than thou wert, by the event.
What in me is dark, Illumine, what is low, raise and support.
Among other evils folly has also this, that it is always beginning to live.
The fool is like those people who think themselves rich with little.
The wise man is wise in vain who cannot be wise to his own advantage.
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.
To climb life's worn, heavy wheel
Which draws up nothing new.