The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality.
Andrew Jackson

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
Samuel Smiles

Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.
Samuel Smiles

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.
Samuel Smiles

Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
Samuel Smiles

We must expect reverses, even defeats. They are sent to teach us wisdom and prudence, to call forth greater energies, and to prevent our falling into greater disasters.
Robert E. Lee

The war... was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.
Robert E. Lee

The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.
James Allen

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.
Henry Ward Beecher

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.
Clifford Stoll

The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.
Joseph Smith, Jr.

Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Ambrose Bierce

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.
e. e. cummings

Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.
William Wordsworth