“Brewesters and baksters, bochiers and cokes –
For thise are men on this molde that moost harm wercheth
To the povere peple”
B-text, Passus 3, line 79.
Piers Plowman
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William Langland 7
English writer 1332–1386Related quotes

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 6: Work

“5779. Wise Men learn by other Men's Harms; Fools, by their own.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Happy is he that grows wise by other men's harms.”
Lexicon Tetraglotton (1660)

“It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.”
As quoted in American Heritage (December 1955), p. 44
Context: I disagree with my brother Charles and Theodore Roosevelt. I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously. These facts have nothing to do with the case and should not have been allowed to interfere with just penalties. It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.
If those men who to be lovers pretend
Behaved more faithfully and did not lie,
And dreaded to deceive or to offend,
Then women might not choose to pass them by.
But each man's heart's a fickle butterfly
Which can alight on one just a short while.
Can it be wrong in this case to beguile?
"The Letter of Cupid", line 267; vol. 1, p. 83; translation from Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpenter Erler (eds.) Poems of Cupid, God of Love (Leiden: Brill, 1990) p. 191.

Conversation was originally at a burger joint in Nashville, TN, but the story was recounted at a Speech honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., January 17, 2005, Clemson University.