“Men may the wise atrenne, and naught atrede.”

Similarly in French: Les fous inventent les modes et les sages les suivent.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Daniel Gray, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Ch 6
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Homo
Context: It was said that God, in order to test mankind which had become swelled with pride as in the time of Noah, had commanded the wise men of that age, among them the Blessed Leibowitz, to devise great engines of war such as had never before been upon the Earth, weapons of such might that they contained the very fires of Hell, and that God had suffered these magi to place the weapons in the hands of princes, and to say to each prince: "Only because the enemies have such a thing have we devised this for thee, in order that they may know that thou hast it also, and fear to strike. See to it, m'Lord, that thou fearest them as much as they shall now fear thee, that none may unleash this dread thing which we have wrought." But the princes, putting the words of their wise men to naught, thought each to himself: If I but strike quickly enough, and in secret, I shall destroy these others in their sleep, and there will be none to fight back; the earth shall be mine.
Such was the folly of princes, and there followed the Flame Deluge.

Mandragorizomene, Fragment 1, 14.

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet

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.

On the White House, in a letter to Abigail Adams (2 November 1800)
Franklin D. Roosevelt had this inscribed on the mantlepiece of the State Dining Room
1800s