
“He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.”
Variant: Those who know, do not speak, those who speak, do not know.
Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 56
"A Qualified Farewell" (essay, early 1950's), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
“He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.”
Variant: Those who know, do not speak, those who speak, do not know.
Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 56
The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Limits Of Inference
Context: p>We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know. We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.</p
“It is not enough to speak; you must know words.”
Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light
Context: It is not enough to speak; you must know words. When you have said, "I am in pain," or when you have said, "I am right," you have said nothing in reality, you have only spoken to yourself. The real presence of truth is not in every word of truth, because of the wear and tear of words, and the fleeting multiplicity of arguments. One must have the gift of persuasion, of leaving to truth its speaking simplicity, its solemn unfoldings. It is not I who will be able to speak from the depths of myself. The attention of men dazzles me when it rises before me. The very nakedness of paper frightens me and drowns my looks. Not I shall embellish that whiteness with writing like light. I understand of what a great tribune's sorrow is made; and I can only dream of him who, visibly summarizing the immense crisis of human necessity in a work which forgets nothing, which seems to forget nothing, without the blot even of a misplaced comma, will proclaim our Charter to the epochs of the times in which we are, and will let us see it. Blessed be that simplifier, from whatever country he may come, — but all the same, I should prefer him, at the bottom of my heart, to speak French.
“He who knows the truth and does not speak it is a miserable coward.”
Alternate version: He who knows the truth and does not speak it truly is a miserable creature.
Quoted in "Julius Streicher" - Page 211 - By Randall L. Bytwerk
Declaration of Conscience (1950)
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
“He that would live in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows nor judge all he see. ”
Foreign Affairs, July 1967.
1960s