“To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said, "I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot."”
Of Agesilaus the Great
Laconic Apophthegms
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Plutarch 251
ancient Greek historian and philosopher 46–127Related quotes

“We are not for making shoes, so shoemakers can have jobs, but so we can have shoes.”

“Let the orator whom I propose to form, then, be such a one as is characterized by the definition of Marcus Cato, a good man skilled in speaking. But the requisite which Cato has placed first in this definition—that an orator should be a good man—is naturally of more estimation and importance than the other.”
Sit ergo nobis orator quem constituimus is qui a M. Catone finitur vir bonus dicendi peritus, verum, id quod et ille posuit prius et ipsa natura potius ac maius est, utique vir bonus.
Book XII, Chapter I, 1; translation by Rev. John Selby Watson
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)

In an interview with Kara Swisher as quoted in Zuckerberg: The Recode interview https://www.recode.net/2018/7/18/17575156/mark-zuckerberg-interview-facebook-recode-kara-swisher (July 18, 2018), Recode.

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: Every physician, shoemaker, mechanic or educator must know his shortcomings if he is to do his work and make his living. For some decades, you have begun to play a governing role on this earth. It is on your thinking and your actions that the future of humanity depends. But your teachers and masters do not tell you how you really think and are; nobody dares to voice the one criticism of you which could make you capable of governing your own fate. You are "free" only in one sense: free from education in governing your life yourself, free from self-criticism.

“Like a rough orator, that brings more truth
Than rhetoric, to make good his accusation.”
Great Duke of Florence (1627).

“Who is wurs shod, than the shoemakers wyfe,
With shops full of shoes all hir lyfe?”
Who is worse shod, than the shoemakers wife,
With shops full of shoes all her life?
Part I, chapter 11.
Proverbs (1546)
“In this world of gossip, a good listener is rarer than a great orator.”
Source: Black Blood