“Wisdom is the daughter of experience.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“A vase of unbaked clay, when broken, may be remoulded, but not a baked one.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Truth was the only daughter of Time.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Ask advice of him who governs himself well.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“He who thinks little, errs much.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. For if you multiply your garments as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience under great offences, and they cannot hurt your feelings.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occured in experience.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Disputed“Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Disputed“Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Disputed“Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Disputed“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Disputed“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Disputed“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Disputed“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
— Leonardo da Vinci DisputedArchimedes Louis Pasteur Aristotle Tony Hoare Napoleon Bonaparte