Leonardo da Vinci

1452–1519 · Florentine polymath, painter and engineer

Leonardo da Vinci studied weather closely — his notebooks are full of storm drawings, cloud studies and the deluge sequence, and he designed instruments to measure humidity and wind. That is precisely why the credit sticks: he looks like a man who would have said this. But observing weather and proposing to control it are separated by four centuries of technology, and he is one of the three or four most magnetic names in the misquotation business, alongside Einstein, Churchill and Mark Twain. If a line sounds visionary and nobody can name the page, that is the tell.

Traced to source

6 quotes we’ve traced to Leonardo da Vinci

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death”

Verified

“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind”

Verified

“Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen”

Verified

“Wisdom is the daughter of experience”

Verified

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art”

Attributed

“He who controls the weather controls the world”

Disputed

Not actually Leonardo da Vinci

Often misattributed to Leonardo da Vinci

Famous lines widely pinned on Leonardo da Vinci that we’ve traced to someone else.

“Everything is connected to everything else”

actually Barry Commoner

“He who controls the weather controls the world”

actually Unknown

“I awoke, only to find that the rest of the world is still asleep”

actually Sigmund Freud

“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men”

actually Dmitri Merezhkovsky

“I love those who can smile in trouble”

actually Thomas Paine

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do”

actually Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else”

actually Tom Peters

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence”

actually Charles de Gaulle

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return”

actually John H. Secondari

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”

actually Clare Boothe Luce

Did they really say it?

Thought Leonardo da Vinci said something else?

Type a quote you think Leonardo da Vinci said — we’ll tell you what we know, or point you to the best sources.