“The greatest cunning is to have none at all.”

— Carl Sandburg

This line appears in section 94 of "The People, Yes" (1936), but that section contains many common proverbs and expressions not original to Sandburg which he is merely quoting within the poem, including this one.
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Carl Sandburg62

American writer and editor 1878–1967

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Evidence"
Evidence (2009)

“The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

“One of the greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it has none.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

1840s, Letters from New York (1843) <br class="br">Source: Letters from New York http://www.bartleby.com/66/59/12260.html, vol. 1, letter 34

“Have courage, or cunning, when you deal with an enemy.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 156
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

“Better it is to have the worst, than none at all.”

Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer

Cardanus Comforte (1574)
Context: Better it is to have the worst, than none at all. for example we see, that houses are nedefull, such as can not possese & stately pallaces of stone, do persuade themselves to dwell in houses of timber and clap, and wanting them, are contented to inhabite the simple cotage, yea rather than not to be housed at all refuse not the pore cabbon, and most beggerly cave. So necessarie is this gift of consolacion, as there livith no man, but that hathe cause to embrace it. for in these things better is it to have any than none at al.