Source: King Lear
The Fourfold Treasure (1871) No. 991 http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0991.htm
“Fools, they do not even know how much more is the half than the whole.”
Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 40; often translated as "The half is greater than the whole."
“Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.”
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Context: Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy?
Don't know what it means? - Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Source: As You Like It (1599–1600)
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Misattributed
“Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.”
Plutarch's Life of Cato
Variant: Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.
“The Gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.”
Source: Ringworld (1970), p. 96
Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
