Variant: Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”
Siddhartha (1922)
Context: Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach 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
Shirley Manson, No Tofu Magazine, Kelly O'Rourke, 2014, 30 January 2015 http://www.notofu.com/site/?portfolio=shirley-manson,
“I always say that a man with one language is like a man with one eye.”
Source: Novels, Lamb (1980), Ch.1 - p.8
"1901", p. 76. Sometimes misquoted as "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing". Sometimes misattributed to Bertrand Russell or Anatole France
A Writer's Notebook (1946)
