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Explore the most valuable thinking from Leonardo Da Vinci, curated for ambitious professionals who demand clarity, execution, and strategic depth. This archive brings together their essential quotes with full source context, allowing you to trace each idea back to its origin. Leonardo Da Vinci's perspective offers practical frameworks you can apply immediately to decision-making, personal growth, and long-term strategy. Whether you're building a business, leading a team, or pursuing mastery in your field, these quotes distill complex wisdom into memorable, actionable insights. Use this collection as a reference library whenever you need Leonardo Da Vinci's lens on ambition, resilience, or high performance.
Quote profile
Seven thousand pages of notebooks. Sketches of flying machines, anatomical studies, water flow patterns, military weapons, architectural designs, botanical observations, mathematical puzzles. Leonardo da Vinci's curiosity had no boundaries and no endpoint—he studied everything, finished almost nothing. The Mona Lisa took four years and he carried it around for decades making tiny adjustments. The Last Supper started deteriorating immediately because he experimented with untested paint techniques. Most of his engineering designs were never built. His treatise on painting was compiled by students from scattered notes after his death. Why does Leonardo matter if he rarely finished anything? Because his process reveals how creativity actually works: obsessive observation, constant experimentation, connecting disparate fields, refusing to accept received wisdom. He dissected 30+ corpses illegally to understand anatomy, then applied that knowledge to painting muscles and expressions with unprecedented realism. Studied bird flight mechanics to design flying machines (that wouldn't work with Renaissance materials, but the aerodynamic principles were sound). Investigated water flow patterns that anticipated modern fluid dynamics. This wasn't genius inspiration—it was relentless curiosity systematically applied. His notebooks show someone thinking on paper: drawings morphing into ideas, questions leading to more questions, observations without immediate application simply because he wanted to understand. The Renaissance ideal of the polymath—someone mastering multiple fields—was embodied by this illegitimate son of a notary who became artist, scientist, engineer, and perpetual student of everything.
Featured highlights
"Truth is so excellent, that if it but praises but small things they become noble."
"Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art."
"He who thinks little, errs much."
"He who neglects the real for the sake of the ideal will learn how to work his own ruin."
"Experience does not err; it is only your judgment that errs in promising itself results which are not caused by your experiments."
"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding."
"Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory."
"The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art."
"Nature is the source of all true knowledge."
"The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation."
"One should not desire the impossible."
"The knowledge of all things is possible."
"Learning never exhausts the mind."
"Where there is most feeling, there is also the greatest martyrdom."
"Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold."
"The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of its existence."
"As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself."
"The mind that is always used will be worn out."
"The painter who draws merely by practice and eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every object set before it without being conscious of their existence."
"Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve."
"Solitude is the school of genius."
"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."
"The natural desire of good men is knowledge."
"Truth is so excellent in itself that, even if it dwells on humble matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies."
"I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have."
"I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection."
"Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs."
"Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood."
"The mind that is always used to the shadows of things can with difficulty undergo the light of truth."
"Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind."
"Blind ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"
"Obstacles cannot bend me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve."
"One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself."
"Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?"
"Water is the driving force of all nature."
Leonardo Da Vinci's ideas continue to shape how people think about ambition, resilience, and clarity.
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