Wisdom vs knowledge

I had a thought this morning that seemed profound, or at least worth writing down before I forget.

The thought was simple: gaining knowledge means adding something, while gaining wisdom means subtracting something. This is easy to illustrate. When you learn something new, you read a book, listen to a lecture, or attend a talk, and gain new concepts and ideas. When you give up concepts or ideas that were wrong or useless, you become wiser. It reminds me of the famous quote by Michelangelo: “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”