Samuel Johnson Quotes

All are agreed, that the increase of learning and good morals are great blessings to society.

It isn't right to judge strength as better than good wisdom.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good-humor, will go far toward securing to you the estimation of the world.

It is of no profit to have learned well, if you neglect to do well.

It's one thing for a man not to know, not to have learned; it's another not to be able to live by what one does know.

It's a big jump from smart to motherwit.

What one knows best is ... what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise.

Most people affirm pleasure to be the good, but the finer sort of wits say it is knowledge.

You cannot help but learn more as take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is and old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it.

All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature

Experience is the only teacher we have.

In practical matters the end is not mere speculative knowledge of what is to be done, but rather the doing of it. It is not enough to know about Virtue, then, but we must endeavor to possess it, and to use it, or to take any other steps that may make.

Experience is the best teacher. But in our day and time, what we need is wisdom, because wisdom overcomes experience, because experience is wisdom, but there's a level of wisdom that overcomes the experience, and that's the experience that's already lived by others. I'm not trying to repeat the histories. I already learned from what they did.

Wisdom may be the ultimate arbiter, but is seldom the immediate agent in human affairs.

Education is cheap; experience is expensive.

Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.

None of us was born knowing or wise; but men become wise by consideration, observation, experience.

He who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink.

It is a flat'ning Thought, that the more we have seen, the less we have to say.

Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.

I’m a great believer in common sense, and the older I get I see that common sense is not that common

Knowledge is a thing you can carry around with you, but you may not apply it. Some knowledge is indiscriminate, and it can be damaging. I recently found a wonderful definition of wisdom: It is that thing which results in the maximum good and the least harm.

Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail.