“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
William Shakespeare As You Like It
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Source: As You Like It (1599–1600)
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Misattributed
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
William Shakespeare As You Like It
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Source: As You Like It (1599–1600)
“A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.”
Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher
Source: How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment
Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher
Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“253. A foole knowes more in his house then a wise man in another's.”
George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
“Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician
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.
“If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.”
Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to the Corinthians
1 Corinthians 3:18 (KJV)
First Epistle to the Corinthians
“A fool boasts about what little he knows. A wise man keeps quiet about what he knows and is safe.”
Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher
Flowers of Wisdom