Random Thoughts

Intelligence and Wisdom

I know that most of us know the meaning of ‘wisdom,’ which is definitely different from ‘intelligence.’ 

I just looked into the quotes on them, and the following caught my attention. 

  • The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” William Shakespeare.
  • Every man is a fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.” 

These quotes made me muse; yes. ‘Wisdom’ and ‘Intelligence’ are independent. I have seen and also understood that ‘intelligence’ failed in many places, whereas wisdom won on several instances. 

Unfortunately, we fail to give much attention to ‘wisdom’ in most of our activities, as almost majority of us believe a lot in our intelligence. When something goes wrong, we invariably try to pass on the blame to several other factors, right from the people around us to the circumstances. Well, in a way, these are true, but not absolutely. If one could analyze the situation and our action with objectivity and ‘wisdom,’ we could easily understand where we erred. 

I feel most of the setbacks are because of our sense of superiority and supreme self-confidence. These don’t allow us to think of the errors we made and always try to justify our actions miserably. Our self-respect and pride never allow us to accept the fact that ‘we didn’t use wisdom in making the decision.’

I have faced debacles, and later I understood and analyzed them also; the major factor that made me fail was my ‘emotional’ quotient. Yes. I am not hesitant to say that most of the decisions I made and executed were based on my ‘emotions’ only proved ‘wrong’ on many instances. 

Wisdom uses objectivity of a problem and its solution; if the approach, decision, or acceptance stems from emotion, it is likely to either fail or rebound on us. 

However, for a normal human, analyzing a situation or problem with ‘objectivity’ is invariably a tall order. I am not telling that all do that. Nevertheless, those who use wisdom to take the call invariably succeed in their efforts.

That is, indeed, a bitter fact.  

I read about 15 quotes on the difference between ‘intelligence’ and ‘wisdom’. All are good ones, but I liked the following. 

‘Intelligence is holding on; Wisdom is letting go.’


Image (c) istock.com

04-Oct-2025

More by :  G Swaminathan


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