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Who really said it

Wisdom is the daughter of experience

Written by Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519 · Florentine painter, engineer and natural philosopher
Verified Free to reuse

Leonardo wrote it in one of his small pocket notebooks — the manuscript now known as Codex Forster III, compiled in Milan around 1490–93. It appears as no. 1150 in Jean Paul Richter’s 1883 edition of the literary works, printed with the Italian from the manuscript on the facing page, so the familiar English is a documented translation of a line Leonardo demonstrably wrote.

Last verified 6 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Wisdom is the daughter of experience” Leonardo da Vinci, from the notebook now known as Codex Forster III (Milan, c. 1490–93); no. 1150 in J. P. Richter, ed., 'The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci' (London: Sampson Low, 1883). Verified via Quotle.info

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Evoking the world of Leonardo da Vinci — Florentine painter, engineer and compulsive notebook-keeper. Theme: "Wisdom is the daughter of experience". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The notebook

Manuscript
Codex Forster III
Written
Milan, c. 1490–1493 — now V&A, MSL/1876/Forster/141/III
First printed in
The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, vol. II, no. 1150 (London: Sampson Low, 1883)
Translation
Jean Paul Richter’s edition, 1883 — English rendering chiefly by Mrs. R. C. Bell, with passages by E. J. Poynter

Experience, the interpreter between formative nature and the human race, teaches how that nature acts among mortals; and being constrained by necessity cannot act otherwise than as reason, which is its helm, requires her to act.

Wisdom is the daughter of experience. Richter nos. 1149–1150

Richter prints the aphorisms in a numbered sequence under ‘Science, its principles and rules’, with Leonardo’s Italian on the facing page. Expanding the contractions Leonardo actually wrote, the facing text for no. 1150 reads “La sapientia è figliola della sperientia.”

The manuscript at the V&A
See the Codex Forster III catalogue record
Read no. 1150 in the 1883 edition

How we checked

  • Jean Paul Richter printed the line as no. 1150 of his 1883 edition of Leonardo’s literary works ↗, with the Italian from the manuscript set facing the English and a marginal reference to the notebook he labels S. K. M. III.
  • Richter’s own table of manuscripts in volume I ↗ identifies ‘S. K. M. III’ as the notebook marked III in the Forster Library at the South Kensington Museum — and that volume’s title page dates the edition to London, 1883.
  • The V&A, the South Kensington Museum’s successor, dates Codex Forster III ↗ to about 1490–1493 in Milan, and records that the notebooks came to the museum in 1876 by the bequest of John Forster.
  • Wikiquote ↗ carries the line in its sourced section for the 1883 Richter edition, and not in either its Disputed or its Misattributed section.
Public domain

Leonardo’s Italian, written about 1490–93, has been out of copyright for centuries. The English wording here comes from Jean Paul Richter’s edition published in London in 1883 — comfortably before the 1931 US public-domain cutoff — so both the original and this translation are free to reuse. Note that later twentieth-century translations of the same sentence are separate works and may still be in copyright.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What people still get wrong

The attribution here is sound — unusually so for a name this heavily counterfeited. What goes wrong is everything around the line: where it supposedly comes from, which sentence it actually is, and whether anyone checked.

“From The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci” Not a book he wrote

Leonardo never compiled a book by that name. The title belongs to the editorial tradition that begins with Jean Paul Richter’s 1883 edition ↗, which gathered scattered notes from many separate manuscripts, sorted them by subject and numbered them. This line is his no. 1150.

“Experience is the mother of all knowledge” Different passage

A separate, much-compressed line that often travels alongside this one as if the two were the same thought. In Richter’s no. 18 ↗ Leonardo calls sound experience “the common mother of all the sciences and arts” — inside a longer argument about correcting your own mistakes in a painting. Same metaphor, different sentence, different context.

Sourceless quote aggregators No citation

Most pages carrying this line name no manuscript, no edition and no translator — which is precisely the mechanism by which Leonardo ends up credited with lines he never wrote. The test that works is whether the Italian is printed with it. Richter’s edition prints it ↗, and the facing text expands to “La sapientia è figliola della sperientia.”

Leonardo really did write it, in a pocket notebook in Milan around 1490–93. The English words are the translation published in Richter’s 1883 edition, no. 1150 ↗, set beside the Italian from the manuscript.

Context

Why the family metaphor is an argument, not a sentiment

Richter filed this line under ‘Science, its principles and rules’, and the company it keeps explains it. The note immediately before calls experience “the interpreter between formative nature and the human race”; three entries later Leonardo insists that experience never errs, and that only our judgments do. The daughter metaphor is not a greeting-card thought about learning from life — it is a claim about where knowledge is allowed to come from.

He works the same family image elsewhere in the notebooks. In the passage Richter numbers 18, Leonardo traces the chain deliberately: good judgment is born of clear understanding, understanding comes of sound rules, and sound rules are the issue of “sound experience — the common mother of all the sciences and arts.” Experience is always the parent; reasoning is always the child.

Experience, the interpreter between formative nature and the human race… — the note directly before this one

How a scattered note became a citable quotation

Richter’s numbering is the reason this line is citable at all. Leonardo wrote without order, titles or sequence; the 1883 edition sorted the surviving manuscripts into subject chapters and gave every passage a number, and those numbers are still how the sentence gets pointed at. When you see ‘Leonardo, no. 1150’, that scaffolding is Richter’s, not Leonardo’s.

One thing the printed edition preserves that the quote sites drop: the Italian sits on the facing page. Expanding Leonardo’s contractions it reads “La sapientia è figliola della sperientia” — and the next entry but one is “Truth was the only daughter of Time”, so he was plainly working the metaphor rather than coining a one-off.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Knowledge Growth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (Richter)gutenberg.org

Free, searchable full text of the Richter translation. Search for “daughter of experience” to land on numbered passage 1150.
The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, vol. II (1883)archive.org

Scan of the original 1883 Sampson Low volume, with Leonardo’s Italian printed facing the English at no. 1150.
The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, vol. I (1883)archive.org

The companion volume — its preface credits the translation and its table of manuscripts decodes Richter’s ‘S. K. M.’ abbreviations.
Explore Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks: Codex Forster IIIvam.ac.uk

The V&A’s guide to the notebook itself: compiled c. 1490–93 in Milan, with a page-by-page digital viewer.
Codex Forster III — collection recordcollections.vam.ac.uk

Museum catalogue entry: 89 folios in mirror script, museum number MSL/1876/Forster/141/III, bequeathed by John Forster.
Leonardo da Vincien.wikiquote.org

Lists this line in the sourced 1883 Richter section — and keeps separate Disputed and Misattributed sections it does not appear in.

The author

Who actually wrote it

Leonardo da Vinci

1452–1519 · Florentine painter, engineer and compulsive notebook-keeper

Leonardo filled thousands of small pages with mirror-written notes on painting, water, flight, anatomy and geometry. Five of those notebooks, bound into three volumes, have sat in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum since 1876 as the Codex Forster. He published almost none of it — the notes stayed private working documents, dispersed after his death and only assembled into readable, numbered editions in the nineteenth century. That is why nearly every ‘Leonardo quote’ you meet is really a line from a notebook, reaching you through a Victorian editor.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Leonardo da Vinci, no. 1150 in Jean Paul Richter, ed., The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols. (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1883), vol. 2; from the notebook now known as Codex Forster III (Victoria and Albert Museum, MSL/1876/Forster/141/III), Milan, c. 1490–93. English translation chiefly by Mrs. R. C. Bell.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Wisdom is the daughter of experience’?” Last verified 6 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/wisdom-is-the-daughter-of-experience/

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